Handful of Stocks Responsible for Long Term Global Returns

Let this sink in! About the age old question of short versus long term investment and so on.

This research seems to be extremely selective if not preconceived. How did they e.g. come with 2.4%.

"... The top five names contributed 10% of total net global equity wealth creation on their own: 

Apple: 23.5%

Microsoft: 19.2%

Amazon: 31.1%

Alphabet/Google: 19.3%

Tencent: 48.1%

Colas highlighted that the top 20 companies were responsible for 20% of total net global equity wealth creation in the sample even though many were not public for the entire period. For example, Amazon went public in 1997. ..."

From the abstract (a very short one for an 89 pages long research paper 😊):

"We study long-run shareholder outcomes for over 64,000 global common stocks during the January 1990 to December 2020 period. We document that the majority, 55.2% of U.S. stocks and 57.4% of non-U.S. stocks, underperform one-month U.S. Treasury bills in terms of compound returns over the full sample. Focusing on aggregate shareholder outcomes, we find that the top-performing 2.4% of firms account for all of the $US 75.7 trillion in net global stock market wealth creation from 1990 to December 2020. Outside the US, 1.41% of firms account for the $US 30.7 trillion in net wealth creation."

Handful of Stocks Responsible for Long Term Global Returns - Markets Media The top performing 2.4% of companies were responsible for the $75.7 trillion in net global stock market wealth creation over three decades.

Long-Term Shareholder Returns: Evidence from 64,000 Global Stocks (open access to draft)