Return for the Stock Market

First, let’s take a look at expectations and reality.
The 28.6 percent compound annual rate of return for the
stock market at the end of the 1990s is a dream now.1 Those returns
were the product, in part, of a revolution in the investing
environment as the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank,
conquered inflation and the federal government seemed to get
sensible about its own fiscal policies, which led to an all-too-brief
period of federal budget surpluses. While the term new economy
may have fallen into disrepute, the sometimes baffling surge in
worker productivity that characterized this period was also behind
the rise in equities, as was more than 18 years of economic
growth, interrupted by just one recession.