You'll find charts for 5, 10, 20 and 30 year windows for the S&P 500. If you look at the 10 year one, you can see it has gone as high as almost 20%/yr for some 10 year period, and has given negative returns at least twice. That's without inflation.
If you adjust for inflation, then it's more like a peak of 17%, and multiple 10 year intervals that were negative.
Even a 30 year window (which I think is where the traditional 7% after inflation comes from), there were periods below 5%. The highest was a bit over 10% (inflation adjusted).
This is assuming a lumped sum in the initial period. If you're looking at putting money in every month/year and calculating the effective returns for those, you'll find those plots as well.
You'll find charts for 5, 10, 20 and 30 year windows for the S&P 500. If you look at the 10 year one, you can see it has gone as high as almost 20%/yr for some 10 year period, and has given negative returns at least twice. That's without inflation.
If you adjust for inflation, then it's more like a peak of 17%, and multiple 10 year intervals that were negative.
Even a 30 year window (which I think is where the traditional 7% after inflation comes from), there were periods below 5%. The highest was a bit over 10% (inflation adjusted).
This is assuming a lumped sum in the initial period. If you're looking at putting money in every month/year and calculating the effective returns for those, you'll find those plots as well.