Back to the future: equities are coming full circle

During the last few years, the determined efforts of economic historians and the exponential growth in computing power have created a surprisingly comprehensive history of stock market indices back to the year 1800. While the first hundred years or so are inevitably less detailed in scope than more recent times, there is nevertheless enough data in the US since 1800 to calculate the returns investors have achieved over all time periods since then. In the UK, we have a sufficiently full and accurate set of data to determine valuation and dividend yields, as well as returns, going back to ...