Stocktake: Buy and hold usually pays off but the wait can be long

Everyone knows stocks have delivered the goods over the long run, but equities also suffer periods of underperformance. Ordinary investors might wonder: how long might you have to wait?

Barclays’ latest annual Equity Gilt Study provides some clues. In the UK, stocks have beaten cash in 69 per cent of two-year periods, 76 per cent of five-year periods and 91 per cent of five-year periods. The respective figures are 67, 75 and 77 per cent when one compares stocks with bonds.

The latter figures show stocks often underperform over long periods. Indeed, although UK equities easily outperformed bonds over the past 50 years, they underperformed over the past 10- and 20-year periods.

US equity returns are much stronger than the UK’s. Even in the US, however, stocks only slightly outperformed bonds over the past 20 years.