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by cainxinth·5y ago·view on hn ↗
> We seem to have an entire generation of people who think "stonks can only go up"

I'm not denying the existence of bubbles, busts, and crashes, but historically and on average, the stock market does only go up.

This market is overvalued and will likely correct, but that doesn't mean it won't continue to rise on the aggregate.

4 comments
As a counterpoint the Nikkei has not since surpassed its peak value in 1989.
It's a good counterpoint. Every developed country will end up as Japan eventually [1], and timing won't help you; where else would you put your investment assets to get exposure to similar risk adjusted returns (developing country returns expose you to greater risk)? Waiting for values to decline will be ineffective, as central banks will acquire assets to prop them up (Bank of Japan is the largest owner of the Nikkei [2]). Returns will decline, and the cost to obtain those declining returns will rapidly increase as trillions of fiat worth of capital chases it.

Over a long enough period, stonks only go up because that is what we've collectively agreed on, and government will backstop at all costs [2] while population and productivity extracted from that population declines over time [3].

I recommend "Shrinking-population Economics: Lessons From Japan" [3] on this topic.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/World-population-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-06/boj-becom...

[3] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4924971189/

I'm curious how dividend yield and DCA factors into that, though. Would a series of investments since 1989 still have underperformed bonds?

And even if DCA weren't factored in, how would the returns compare?

True. But in a period 1969-1989 it had a return of, IIRC, 5700%.
Markets do seem to only go up, but the stocks on the market today are very different from 10, 20, 30+ years ago. I know that poorly performing stocks are eventually removed from indices and exchanges and they are replaced with new ones. Is it the case the market always going up in the long run is actually due to survivorship bias?
Probably has more to do with the fact that society on the whole tends to build more than it destroys.

More value is created over time than lost.

More _economic_ value, sure. But at what cost to the environment, biodiversity, our dwindling resources, societal health, our psyches?

When does this become unsustainable?

None of that has a stock exchange listing.
It's not even close to being unsustainable now and it may ultimately remain sustainable for timescales that are difficult for us to relate to.
That's an extreme claim.
That's not survivorship bias, it's just churn. And, broadly speaking, growth -- there are more companies operating now than there were in 1950.
Say you confidently bought the roaring Eurostox 600 in March 2000. You saw it coming back to its value in July 2007. Then reach 1% gain in March 2015. And a 7% gain in Feb 2020.

Buying S&P, or the Apple, Amazon and Tesla ones is another story. Looking at the average can be misleading.

You’re not counting dividends here.
Thanks for the note. This change indeed the result. https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?isin=DE000263530...
This is why I dollar cost average. Timing purchases is impossible for me since I’m not a finance genius, so I just buy stock each time I get paid.
FYI that's just closer to periodically investing. Dollar Cost averaging is more along the lines of "I already have $100 in my account and will invest $10/month for 10 months."
Planning to DCA from future cashflows is still DCA.
According to Investopedia: "A perfect example of dollar cost averaging is its use in 401(k) plans...an employee can select a pre-determined amount of their salary..."
Exactly. Look at the stock market from 1970 to today. 2001 and 2008 are a blip on the radar.

What this is missing is the amount of time investors are investing in. Day traders don’t care about tomorrow, they care about the difference between 9 am and 4 pm. Options traders might care about the next few weeks. If you are investing for 20+ years in a retirement account, you don’t care about the bubble. It will self correct over a year and by the time you withdraw, stocks are significantly up.

Bonds make sense if you are investing for 1 month to say 3 years.

The SP500 was around $950 in Sept of 1997. It was also around $950 in July of 2009. I would say the stock market went no where for 20 years.

I don't think it is fair to call 2001 and 2008 "blips". Their combined effect was we lost 20 years worth of potential growth.

It certainly didn't go nowhere. Obviously, if someone bought and sold their entire portfolio on those (VERY cherry-picked - just look at the graph, lol) days, they would have made 0 dollars.

But look on either side of that blip and there is plenty of profit.