Very Long Term Equity Investment Strategies

Abstract

Recent popular research has suggested that it is possible to time the U.S. equity market over long investment horizons by looking at the real value of the aggregate stock market index relative to an average of the recent past levels. This article shows that this is not the case and that a simple buy-and-hold equity strategy dominates for nearly all time periods for both the U.S. and the U.K. in the 20th century. However, the aggregate real stock price is a more useful long-run valuation metric than incorporating dividend and earnings information, a result that has potential value for investment managers, given the problems with definitions and consistency of these variables.