, Columnist
Question Everything You Know About Bonds Versus Stocks
Debt has outpaced equities for 20 years, upending conventional wisdom about investing.
What ever happened to the equity risk premium?
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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While everyone was consumed with the coronavirus, something remarkable happened in U.S. markets: When March ended, bonds had outpaced stocks over the last two decades.
That’s right. The Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index beat the S&P 500 Index by 0.3 percentage points a year over the last 20 years through the first quarter, including dividends. As it turned out, investors would have made more money and lost less sleep if they had just stuck with boring old bonds.