Investing professionals are constantly thinking about two factors when building portfolios: risk and return.
While most asset classes follow the risk/return rules, a couple notable outliers emerge. Commodities, despite being one of the jumpier asset classes, offer the weakest 20-year return at 0.73%. You'd haveThe other standout is an investor favorite: U.S. large-company stocks — you know, the stuff that popular indexes such as the S&P 500 are made of. No asset class performed better over the past two decades than U.S. large-cap's 9.
That means while the S&P 500 may have cleaned up against other stock indexes of late, that may not be the case between now and the time you retire. For long-term investors, he says, "nibbling at small- and mid-cap stocks as well as international investments might be a good thing."