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.

"Stocks always win in the long run" has a real exception on the books: from the spring of 1996 through March 2020 — 24 years — long-term US government bonds returned about 8.2% a year, edging out the S&P 500’s 8.0%, and did it with roughly a third less volatility.

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.

The worst rolling 10-year total return the US stock market has ever produced is a loss of about 40%, for the decade starting at the September 1929 peak. The best rolling 10-year return is a gain of about 597% — roughly 21% a year — for the decade starting in the summer of 1949. Same market, ten-year holding period, wildly different outcomes depending only on when you started.