There are many reasons for the poor performance of stocks and bonds in 2022: Ukraine war, pandemic, inflation, energy crisis. However, a comparison by Sebastian Dörr shows that it was even a historically bad year from an investor’s point of view.
The capital market analyst at HQ Trust compared the performance of U.S. stocks and bonds with that of previous years. How often were the asset classes in positive territory, and how often did they end the year in negative territory? Sebastian Dörr’s analysis covers the years from 1926 to 2022.
– “From an investor’s perspective, 2022 was a historically bad year. Bonds posted the weakest performance of the past 97 years. Equities didn’t look much better.”
– “Since 1926, there have been just six years when stocks fell more than they have in the past 12 months: 1930, 1931, 1937, 1974, 2002, and 2008.”
– “Years in which stocks and bonds have negative performance have been extremely rare in the past: Since 1926, this has been the case only 7 times.”
– “In more than half the cases, stocks and bonds ended the year with a gain: in 51 of 97 years.”
– “In 20 years, only stocks gained; in 19 years, only bonds gained.”
