To stay current with all that’s happening in the financial world and beyond, I do quite a bit of reading. Here are a few items I came across this past week I thought were worth sharing.
Trump’s tax cuts push U.S. burden lower in world (Wall Street Journal)
With the 2017 tax cuts, the U.S. has one of the lowest tax rates in the world among major economies. Only Ireland, Chile & Mexico are lower. Also interesting is that France’s tax rate is almost twice as high as the U.S.
John D. Rockefeller was almost three times richer than Bezos (Bloomberg)
While Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are some of the richest people alive today, they’ve got nothing on Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in their prime. When you measure wealth as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), you can compare the historical figures to current billionaires.
Chart: Range of real returns for stocks, bonds & gold over various holding periods (StarCapital Research)
This chart shows annual returns after inflation. Here are just a few of the many takeaways.
- At shorter holding periods (<5 years), stocks and gold have generated fantastic positive returns, and shocking losses
- As holding period increases, stocks have had more consistent and higher returns than either gold or bonds
- There have been 10, 20 & 30 year periods where bonds have done worse than stocks
- There has essentially never been a 20 year or longer holding period where stocks have lost money after inflation. The same cannot be said for bonds or gold.