Equities In A Slower Growth World

One of the most frequently quoted pieces of investment advice is that equities are a good long-run investment.

The argument runs that for all the ups and downs of the stock market equities outperform other assets, such as cash or government bonds, in the long term.

Like much investment advice this one comes with caveats, in this case two rather hefty ones.

The first relates to "the long term".  Over the last century UK equities have had some periods of terrible performance, where investors either lost money or would have done better holding other assets. At some times in the last 110 years you would need to hold UK equities for more than ten years to make up for periods of underperformance.