[00:01]A key selling point for investing in the stock market
[00:06]is that over the long term, the risk of owning stocks decreases
[00:13]and the odds of making money jumps.
[00:17]But cracks in that Wall Street marketing message
[00:21]became painfully visible in the just-ended 2000s
[00:27]nicknamed the "Lost Decade." For the first time,
[00:32]the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index finished a calendar decade
[00:39]with a negative total return.
[00:42]And that was even after the S&P rose 23.5% in 2009, its best gain since 2003.
[00:56]Indeed, a $1 investment in the S&P 500 on Dec. 31, 1999,
[01:06]was worth roughly 90 cents at the end of 2009
[01:13]and that negative return includes dividend income.
[01:17]In contrast, investments viewed as harbors,
[01:22]or more conservative places to park cash,
[01:26]delivered positive returns in the 2000s.
[01:31]A $1 investment in gold grew to nearly $4,
[01:38]according to Strategas Research Partners.
[01:42]And a buck invested in U.S. government bonds,
[01:47]arguably the world's safest investment, grew to nearly $2.
[01:54]The dismal showing by U.S. stocks raises a key question
[02:00]on the first trading day of the 2010s:
[02:05]Will the lost decade serve as a optimistic "launching platform"
[02:11]for the new decade? Or will the negative move from two brutal bear markets
[02:19]in the past 10 years and the economic damage caused by
[02:24]the worst financial crisis
[02:27]since the Great Depression set the stage for a second decade of
[02:33]subpar performance for U.S. stocks?
[02:37]In the past, stocks have did well
[02:41]after 10-year periods in which they did poorly.
[02:45]The S&P 500 has never suffered back-to-back losses in calendar decades.
[02:54]In the 1930s, the last decade the index bled red ink,
[03:00]it posted an annualized loss of 5.3%, excluding dividends,
[03:07]and posted a little annual total return,
[03:11]which includes dividends, of 1.0%, S&P says.
[03:18]The good news: The index posted annualized total returns
[03:23]of nearly 9% in the 1940s and 19% in the 1950s.
[03:32]Similarly, an analysis of the 15 worst rolling 10-year periods
[03:38]for the S&P 500 by The Leuthold Group found
[03:44]that stocks posted positive returns in the next 10 years in all 15 cases.
[03:53]The average annual gain: 10.7%, topping the 10% long-term average.
[04:02]But not always. Japan's stock and real estate bubble
[04:09]that burst in early 1990 set Japan up for not one lost decade but two.
[04:18]The Nikkei stock average peaked on Dec. 29, 1989, at 38,915
[04:29]but remains more than 70% below its high despite big periodic rallies.
[04:38]Steep drops wipe out excesses.Jeremy Siegel, a finance professor notes
[04:46]that the nearly 20% annualized total returns posted
[04:52]by the S&P 500 in the 1980s and 1990s were the best back-to-back decades ever.
[05:02]The losses that followed in the 2000s were the market's way of
[05:07]twisting out the joyment.
[05:10]Shocks to investor sentiment are a positive contrarian sign. Jeff Kleintop,
[05:18]chief market strategist at LPL Financial,
[05:23]says stocks tend to get riskier when investor expectations
[05:29]are super-optimistic. On the flip side, when sentiment gets depressed,
[05:35]upside surprises are more likely.