Lecturer and Research Scholar at Stanford University and President of Govern for California
During a recent
public discussion about expected investment returns, the Chief
Investment Officer of a California public pension fund was quoted as
saying that "I would argue, and I have, with people who said it’s going
to be 6 percent or lower that they are basically saying the United
States is going to go in the drain in the next 100 years. I’m not
willing to go there."
By all accounts this CIO is a very smart fellow. However, in making
that statement he’s up against some tough math because, for the 100
years of the 20th century – not exactly "in the drain" for the USA – an
investor with assets allocated like the typical pension fund would have
earned (you guessed it) around 6 percent.
Somehow a perfectly good return in the 20th century has become a poor
expected return for the 21st century. How did that happen? As Warren
Buffett explained in a remarkably prescient article
in 1999, sometimes people extrapolate from statistically insignificant
periods to draw invalid inferences about future long-term performance.
For example, many people today came of age during the 17-year
investment boom from 1982 – 1999, but as Buffett pointed out, "The
increase in equity values [from 1982 to 1999] beats anything you can
find in history."