Since the late 1920s, simply holding cash in short-term Treasury bills has beaten the US stock market in roughly one out of every three calendar years — even though stocks have compounded at nearly 10% a year over the full period, more than three times cash’s return.
The "safe" asset isn't always safe. From 1950 to 1981 — a long stretch of rising inflation and rising rates — long-term US government bonds lost more than half their value after adjusting for inflation, even though their stated (nominal) returns stayed positive the whole time.
Most individual stocks are, over their full lifetime, a bad bet. A landmark study of nearly every US stock from 1926 to 2016 found that only about 43% ever beat the return of a one-month Treasury bill over their entire existence — and that the best-performing 4% of companies accounted for the market’s *entire* net wealth creation over that 90-year span.