Stock-market-returns are almost always going to be higher than GDP growth, by a significant margin. A GDP growth of X% implies that companies revenues/profits a

Stock-market-returns are almost always going to be higher than GDP growth, by a significant margin. A GDP growth of X% implies that companies revenues/profits are going to be ~X% higher next year. But your return-on-investment isn't driven purely by the X% profit growth. It's also driven by the baseline profits that companies make. If you buy a share for $10, and it has an EPS of $0.50, you're immediately getting an ROI of 5%, even in a flat-GDP world. If GDP grows by 2%, and the company's projected-future-profits grow by 2%, you'll get the benefit of that 2% profit growth, in addition to the baselines ROI of 5%. The PE ratio gives a pretty good indicator of long-term ROI baseline. Given the current PE ratio of 25, which is certainly worryingly high, it still implies a baseline ROI of 4%. Any GDP growth we happen to get, is simply gravy on top of that baseline.