have been rising at a breakneck pace. Whether you are in America, Europe, Japan or India, share prices listed on a bourse near you have spent most of this year setting fresh records, only to break them again straight away . America’sTo a certain extent, this record-smashing is to be expected. Dump the losers periodically, as benchmark indices tend to, and the history of equities is one long march upwards.
This has led global stocks to deliver an annualised real return of 5.1% since 1900, and American ones of 6.5%. Worry all you like that the narratives being spun around today’s boom—from techno-euphoria in America to a corporate-governance revolution in Japan—are overblown, and that a reversal is coming. Those seeking riches should simply set aside such concerns and invest for the long run.