It has become an annual tradition here at Abnormal Returns to make a big deal out of the release of the latest (2024) edition of the now UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook. See posts from 2023, 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 UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2024 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, this year’s yearbook looks at the performance of equity and bond markets during (really) extreme periods. They also look at long term history of corporate bond spreads in the U.S.
Even the summary version of the piece is 57 pages. So download and dig in.
* Missed the 2021 edition, can’t imagine why…