Sound Investing

How confident can we be in past performance?


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Paul Merriman responds to a podcast listener who wrote: “I am convinced your 4-Fund Combo is a portfolio I want to add to my portfolio. My question is, how confident are you in the past performance of these four asset classes from 1970-2019 AND how confident can we be about any performance?"

Before digging into the specifics of the 4-Fund Portfolio, I re-read a 2015 MarketWatch article (written with Rich Buck) entitled, 10 things you should know about portfolio performance.

To help investors get a sense of how difficult it is to pin down future returns, I looked back at the period from 1928-1969 to see what an investor might learn about risk and return from these 4 asset classes. Questions to which I sought answers were:

  1. What were the nominal returns of the S&P 500 and 4-Fund Combo?
  2. What were inflation adjusted (real) returns?
  3. What were tax rates in 1969 compared to 2019?
  4. What were the 1929-1932 losses of the S&P 500 compared to the 4-Fund Combo?
  5. Is the commitment to build the portfolio for future income, build the portfolio for present income, or build the portfolio for family and charities after your death?
  6. I hope you will forward this link to friends and family, leave a comment or like at whatever site you are accessing this podcast, and support The Foundation in continuing our commitment to helping investors.

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    Sound InvestingBy Paul Merriman

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