Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2025
Key topics
With rising market concentration, the latest Global Investment Returns Yearbook reappraises the importance of diversification across asset classes to reduce portfolio risk.
Over the last 125 years, equities have outperformed bonds, bills and inflation in every country included in the data.
The 21st century is now 25 years old. Stock returns have been lower than over the 20th century.
Global equity investors still enjoyed an annualized real return of 3.5% and an equity risk premium relative to bills of 4.3%.
Equity returns are volatile, so it takes very long histories to obtain a realistic understanding of what long-run returns can tell us about the future.
The 21st century is now 25 years old. Measured since the start of 2000, stock returns have been lower than over the 20th century, though global equity investors still enjoyed an annualized real return of 3.5% and an equity risk premium relative to bills of 4.3%.
Yet, while many people consider the long term to be ten or 20 years, the Yearbook demonstrates that much longer periods than 20 years are needed to understand trends in risk and return from stocks and bonds, because markets are so volatile and variable over very long periods.
The Global Investment Returns Yearbook can help us see the long-term effects of following the principles of diversification, asset allocation, and risk and reward. It once again teaches that a long-term perspective matters, and not to underestimate the value of a disciplined investment approach.
The core of the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook is a long-run database that shows annual returns on stocks, bonds, bills, inflation and currencies for 35 markets. The unrivalled breadth and quality of its underlying data make the Yearbook the global authority on long-run asset performance.
Of the 35 markets covered, 23 have 125-year histories from 1900 to 2024. The remaining 12 markets have start dates in the second half of the 20th century, with either close to or more than 50 years of data. In addition, the Yearbook monitors 55 additional markets for which it has equity returns data for periods within a range of 14–49 years.
125 years of financial data in one place
125 years of financial data in one place
The Global Investment Returns Yearbook, a body of work assembled by Professor Paul Marsh and Dr. Mike Staunton of London Business School and Professor Elroy Dimson of Cambridge University, has established itself as the definitive source for the analysis of the long-term performance of global financial assets.
This 26th edition, launched today by UBS Investment Bank and UBS Global Wealth Management’s Chief Investment Office, marks something of a milestone, as it provides us the opportunity to compare the first quarter of the 21st century’s market performance with that of the 20th century. This edition also includes a deep dive on diversification.