CHESSNOID

Numbers hold a natural interest for me.  I think they can tell a story all by themselves.  The last 10 years on different investments and their returns are very surprising.  It was definitely an usual decade and no one could of predicted what would perform the best.

Also amazing is that the numbers in the last 10 years show that what I learned from college textbooks and professors were proven to be false.  Of course this can change over time.  But for now these are what the numbers are by investment returns.

Bloomberg:

Relative Value

Investors who put $10,000 in stocks on Dec. 31, 1999, have $9,090 now, while the same amount in 10-year Treasury notes would have grown to about $18,000 following a 6.1 percent annualized return, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A $10,000 investment in the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials increased 3.3 percent a year to $13,803. Gold futures rose 14 percent a year, turning $10,000 into $37,852.

The average annualized return for U.S. equity mutual funds was 1.7 percent during the decade. Only one fund out of 3,833 gained in 2008: Forester Value Fund rose 0.4 percent that year, according to Chicago-based Morningstar Inc.

Hedge funds’ annualized return was about 6.3 percent since Dec. 31, 1999, according to Hedge Fund Research’s HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index. The measure rose 19 percent in 2009 through Dec. 15.

Isn’t that amazing? Not only did the higher risk stocks perform worse than the low risk treasuries, it even lost to gold which more than tripled in the last 10 years.