Stockmarkets
If you take any 20-year period, the US stockmarket has always delivered positive real returns.
But Japan’s stockmarket average, the Nikkei 225, peaked at nearly 39,000 in the late ’80s and today it’s only around 17,000.
Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, et al, (”Irrational Optimism“) examined the record of 16 stockmarkets that were in continuous operation over the course of the 20th century. (This selection showed survivorship bias by excluding countries like Russia and China, where investors’ holdings were wiped out.) The academics found that only 3 other countries could match the US record of having no 20-year periods with negative real returns.
Japanese, French, German and Spanish investors all suffered instances where they had to wait 50-60 years to earn a positive real return; in Italy and Belgium, the waiting period stretched to 70 years.