The 2025 edition of the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook is available for free download in a 22-page PDF with 10 Key Insights on the UBS website. This annual publication provides an excellent “big picture” overview of the last 125 years of market history, and serves as a partial antidote to all the junk we are bombarded with about what happened in the the last 24 hours.
UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook documents long-run returns on stocks, bonds, bills, currencies and other assets since 1900. Its goal is to inform investors about long-run historical performance, to interpret it, analyze it, learn from it, and help illuminate current concerns.
I definitely recommend downloading the report and at least scrolling through the historical charts and headline insights. The lessons may be familiar, but they are a good reminder of what builds wealth over the long run.
- The composition of the stock market changes significantly over time.
- Stock outperformance over bonds and cash over the long run is huge.
- Patience is required to capture this outperformance from stocks.
- Diversification can help, but it’s not guaranteed.
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Sadly this is only a shortened version of the full yearbook. You have to be a UBS client to access it.
The full report is available from London Business School price GBP395. Contact mstaunton@london.edu
Will be very interesting to see what Berkshire does with its pile of cash over the next 5 years. The UBS report makes clear that, on average, equities provide the largest real returns over the long-haul. Still, it probably makes many people nervous to enter the equities market when indexes are trading at or near all time highs and the Oracle of Omaha is, to a degree, sitting on the sideline.