...Buffett’s prediction concerned what magnitude of total returns—stock appreciation plus reinvested dividends—U.S. investors would reap in the 17 years that began as 1999 was moving to its close. Buffett made the prediction originally in July of that year in a speech he gave at an Allen & Co. conference; repeated it in several speeches over the next few months; and worked with this writer to turn the speeches into a Fortune article, “Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market,” that ran in our Nov. 22, 1999 issue. You will notice that today is precisely 17 years later.
...Net of the trading and management costs that investors incur, he said—implying that these costs could strip investors of a percentage point in their return—he predicted they might realize annual returns in the 17-year period from late 1999 to late 2016 that would be a so-so 6%.
Today, with the 17 years having passed, what is the answer?
First of all, be reminded that the stock market—as it is presented by the Dow and Standard & Poor’s indices, for example—does not deal in “net” returns. What you monitor on your computer screens are gross returns, before any trading and management costs are deducted.
But the record shows that the period’s gross returns are anemic enough to confirm Buffett’s general accuracy. From mid-November, 1999, to last Friday’s trading day, the annualized total return to investors from the Dow Industrials was 5.9%.
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