It has become an annual tradition here at Abnormal Returns to make a big deal out of the release of the latest (2023) edition of the Credit Suisse Global Investment Yearbook. See posts from 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012. The yearbook is now only available online in a summary version to the general public.*
For those of you not aware, the authors of this document, Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton, are also the authors of the well-received Triumph of the Optimists: 101 Years of Global Investment Returns. So the 2023 Credit Suisse Global Investment Yearbook is a sense an update to the data in the book.*
The value of a document like the Global Investment Returns Yearbook isn’t that it is some sort of roadmap for the returns. Instead it gives us a better sense for where we have been. For example, high and persistent inflation wasn’t on many’s people’s roadmaps a year or two ago, so diving into that data makes a lot of sense.
* Missed the 2021 edition, can’t imagine why…