Passage 4 Will Stocks’“Lost Decade” Usher in Another Bull Market?
	股市十年回顾与展望 《今日美国》
	
	[00:01]A key selling point for investing in the stock market
	[00:06]is that over the long term, the risk of owning stocks decreases
	[00:13]and the odds of making money jumps.
	[00:17]But cracks in that Wall Street marketing message
	[00:21]became painfully visible in the just-ended 2000s
	[00:27]nicknamed the "Lost Decade." For the first time,
	[00:32]the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index finished a calendar decade
	[00:39]with a negative total return.
	[00:42]And that was even after the S&P rose 23.5% in 2009, its best gain since 2003.
	[00:56]Indeed, a $1 investment in the S&P 500 on Dec. 31, 1999,
	[01:06]was worth roughly 90 cents at the end of 2009
	[01:13]and that negative return includes dividend income.
	[01:17]In contrast, investments viewed as harbors,
	[01:22]or more conservative places to park cash,
	[01:26]delivered positive returns in the 2000s.
	[01:31]A $1 investment in gold grew to nearly $4,
	[01:38]according to Strategas Research Partners.
	[01:42]And a buck invested in U.S. government bonds,
	[01:47]arguably the world's safest investment, grew to nearly $2.
	[01:54]The dismal showing by U.S. stocks raises a key question
	[02:00]on the first trading day of the 2010s:
	[02:05]Will the lost decade serve as a optimistic "launching platform"
	[02:11]for the new decade? Or will the negative move from two brutal bear markets
	[02:19]in the past 10 years and the economic damage caused by
	[02:24]the worst financial crisis
	[02:27]since the Great Depression set the stage for a second decade of
	[02:33]subpar performance for U.S. stocks?
	[02:37]In the past, stocks have did well
	[02:41]after 10-year periods in which they did poorly.
	[02:45]The S&P 500 has never suffered back-to-back losses in calendar decades.
	[02:54]In the 1930s, the last decade the index bled red ink,
	[03:00]it posted an annualized loss of 5.3%, excluding dividends,
	[03:07]and posted a little annual total return,
	[03:11]which includes dividends, of 1.0%, S&P says.
	[03:18]The good news: The index posted annualized total returns
	[03:23]of nearly 9% in the 1940s and 19% in the 1950s.
	[03:32]Similarly, an analysis of the 15 worst rolling 10-year periods
	[03:38]for the S&P 500 by The Leuthold Group found
	[03:44]that stocks posted positive returns in the next 10 years in all 15 cases.
	[03:53]The average annual gain: 10.7%, topping the 10% long-term average.
	[04:02]But not always. Japan's stock and real estate bubble
	[04:09]that burst in early 1990 set Japan up for not one lost decade but two.
	[04:18]The Nikkei stock average peaked on Dec. 29, 1989, at 38,915
	[04:29]but remains more than 70% below its high despite big periodic rallies.
	[04:38]Steep drops wipe out excesses.Jeremy Siegel, a finance professor notes
	[04:46]that the nearly 20% annualized total returns posted
	[04:52]by the S&P 500 in the 1980s and 1990s were the best back-to-back decades ever.
	[05:02]The losses that followed in the 2000s were the market's way of
	[05:07]twisting out the joyment.
	[05:10]Shocks to investor sentiment are a positive contrarian sign. Jeff Kleintop,
	[05:18]chief market strategist at LPL Financial,
	[05:23]says stocks tend to get riskier when investor expectations
	[05:29]are super-optimistic. On the flip side, when sentiment gets depressed,
	[05:35]upside surprises are more likely.