Triggered!
I Tweeted out a few news articles today, as I usually do, one of which contained the below 'triggering' headline in the AFR.
Wow, so many thunderous replies!
There's basically two sides to this debate (if 'debate' is actually the right word - it's usually a slanging match of sorts).
Yes, it's been a disappointing stretch for the Aussie stock market, especially if you were to account for the very large rise in the cost of living over the past 16 years.
On the other hand, the Aussie stock market tends to be a strong dividend payer, and the dividend streams are tax effective.
On an accumulation basis the chart looks somewhat different...
Moreover, it's always a bit misleading to cherry-pick start and end dates, since as far as I know nobody ever buys all of their stock portfolio at the market peak and then never invests again.
The 20-year ASX chart shows that despite the global financial crisis boom/bust period - which was fueled by the resources construction boom and the liberal use of margin loans - the index has still broadly doubled over the past two decades, even before accounting for the dividend streams.
Both sides of the story, as Phil Collins once said.
Finally, as to whether the Aussie stock market has underperformed US stocks on an accumulation basis (i.e. including dividends)...well, yes that is true, but this has also been the case for most investments over the past three decades.
Nice clickbait headline, though...that's definitely true!
