Investing 10 Year or More Time Horizon

It is good to know the performance over a 74 year period or 60 year period or a 10 year period. How do you invest if you have a time horizon of 10 years or more? To answer the question, we will look at the minimum return, maximum return, and percentage of time for a positive return for a Small Cap Stock Index, Large Cap Stock Index, Long Term Bonds, and Short Term Bonds in the book Investments.

The information for time horizons of 1 through 7 years showed that short bonds gave the best minimum return and highest percentage of positive returns. At the 8 year horizon, we saw a major reversal and stocks became the leader with the best minimum return, maximum return, and percent positive return. The trend continued for a 9 year time horizon. Does is continue for 10 or more years?

We will look at the time period from 1926 - 1999, to include the Great Depression and 1940-1999 to reflect a more normal period. It depends if you want a true worst case or a more normal environment.

Time Period 1926 - 1999

Investment/Min Return/Max Return/% Positive Return
Small Stocks/6.74%/36.39%/100%
Large Stocks/2.53%/21.46%/100%
Long Bonds/0.33%/14.60%/100%
Short Bonds/-0.15%/9.32%/94%

Time Period 1940-1999

Investment/Min Return/Max Return/% Positive Return
Small Stocks/6.74%/34.80%/100%
Large Stocks/2.53%/21.46%/100%
Long Bonds/0.33%/14.60%/100%
Short Bonds/0.37%/9.32%/100%

What conclusions can we draw from this data:

1. The trend continues and at the 10 year time horizon, the same conclusions can be drawn as the 8 & 9 year time horizons.
2. The gap in minimum return between stocks and bonds continue to grow. It does not seem possible that the only negative minimum return is short term bonds during 1926 - 1999. One might have thought that short term bonds, known as the safest investment, would have been positive in any 10 year period. One might have thought that small cap stocks, known as the riskiest investment would have had this honor of having the worst minimum return.
3. The trend continues with stocks having better minimum returns, maximum returns, and % positive returns than bonds.
4. The data during 1926 - 1999 looks a little wierd as the % positive return for short term bonds is the lowest.
5. The impact of the Great Depression has had a greater impact on the performance of bonds rather than the performance of stocks. Stocks turned from a negative minimum return to a positive minimum return at the 8 year time horizon during both time periods.
6. The minimum return of short term bonds and long term bonds appear similar at the 10 year time horizon.
7. Bottom Line: If you can handle the ups and downs, keeping your focus on the long term, stocks outperform bonds in all categories. Buy stocks rather than bonds.
   

If you have a child going to college in 10 or more years you should be looking at mutual funds that contain large cap and small cap stocks.