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The general rule of thumb for stock market returns is a 7% real return. Here's a nice little tool if you want to play with the numbers yourself over particular

• Retric 11y ago
  From 1960-2010 the S&P's inflation adjusted return was well under 7%. Granted, the 1950's had great returns, but the trend has been lower returns / year over time and both the 1970's and 2000's had negative real returns.
• psykotic 11y ago
  > The general rule of thumb for stock market returns is a 7% real return. Over the 15-year period from 1966 to 1981, the real annualized rate of return in the stock market was -0.4% because of high inflation. You need to look at 20 to 30 year periods to get into the range of 7% real annualized returns across the 20th century. And there is the general issue with using the past as a statistical predictor of the future when the time window's length is a large fraction of the 20th century. Not to mention extreme outlier events whose level of impact isn't represented at all in the historical data. A good book to read is Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run.