11. The Outlook for the Future

“The last ten years have produced very bad returns...but you talk to people and they still think equities are wonderful. I don’t dispute it—I think equities are a good long-term investment. What worries me in the short-run is how unanimous that vision is.”

Andrew Smithers, president, Smithers & Co., London, January 2010

To invest in the success of Corporate America over the past 35 years, investors would have done well by buying and holding an S&P 500 index fund. Warren Buffett said as much in his 2004 letter to clients.

But that simple strategy may not be the winning formula for the next 35 years. There are legitimate concerns about what the next generation of growth will look like for U.S. markets and markets ...

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