Die Jahrhundert-Studie zu Aktien, die keiner versteht

Summary

The video reviews a 100-year study of U.S. stock returns attributed to Hendrik Bessembinder. It argues that widely repeated headlines—such as “96% of stocks fail” or “just 4% create all the wealth”—can be misleading without understanding how the figures are calculated.

Study findings and key figures

• The dataset covers nearly 30,000 U.S. stocks from 1926 to 2025.
• The U.S. stock portfolio returned about 10.1% annually over the period, compared with 3.3% annually for one-month U.S. Treasury bills. The resulting 6.8-percentage-point risk premium is calculated retrospectively (ex post), not forecast in advance.
• The study reports an average cumulative return of 30,000% per stock, but a median cumulative return of –7%. These are cumulative, not annualized, figures, and many stocks were listed for far less than 100 years.
• The average stock in the dataset existed for 11.7 years; the median lifespan was 6.8 years.
• Aggregate shareholder wealth increased by about $91 trillion. The presenter says 46 companies accounted for half of that increase in the updated period, compared with 89 companies in figures through 2016.
• Around 48% of stocks had positive returns and 52% had negative returns. When compared with Treasury bills, only about 41% produced a positive risk premium; roughly 59% did not.
• The finding that 3.7% of stocks generated 100% of net wealth creation is based on a cumulative, absolute-dollar calculation. The presenter explains that this method effectively allows some winners to offset earlier losses. It does not mean the other stocks produced no gains or that only 3.7% were worthwhile investments.

How to interpret the results

• Mean versus median: A small number of exceptionally successful stocks can pull the arithmetic average far above the median. The presenter uses the Bill Gates analogy to illustrate how outliers skew an average.
• Right-skewed returns: Stock outcomes are unevenly distributed. Many stocks perform poorly, while a small number of big winners can generate very large gains. A few winners can therefore outweigh several losses.
• Absolute wealth creation versus investor returns: Cumulative dollar totals favor large companies and companies listed for a long time. They do not directly show which stocks delivered the best annualized returns on an investor’s capital.
• Inflation and time: Comparing absolute dollar contributions across a century without adjusting for inflation can make more recent companies appear disproportionately important.
• Portfolio implications: The presenter says broad diversification can help investors avoid missing rare, high-performing stocks. However, the study does not establish that only a tiny fraction of stocks deliver positive returns. For a hypothetical portfolio of ten individual stocks, the historical proportions suggest roughly five might have negative returns and about six might underperform Treasury bills. The few winners would need to outperform substantially to compensate.

Stocks, sectors, and instruments mentioned

Companies: Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Broadcom, Exxon Mobil, Meta, Tesla, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, Altria Group, Netflix, and Micron.

Index: MSCI World, whose prominent constituents the presenter compares with the study’s leading wealth creators.

Instruments and benchmarks: U.S. equities, one-month U.S. Treasury bills, and short-term U.S. government bonds.

No ticker symbols are stated in the subtitles.

Performance examples

• Altria Group: Reported as having the highest cumulative return in the full dataset, with an annualized return of about 16.5% over the period cited.
• Over a more recent 20-year comparison, the presenter gives annualized returns of about 37% for Nvidia and 32% for Netflix.

Cautions and framing

The presenter cautions against treating “96% fail” or “4% create all the wealth” as direct investment conclusions. He emphasizes checking whether a statistic measures cumulative or annualized returns, absolute dollars or relative performance, and total returns or returns above a risk-free benchmark. He presents the discussion as his own interpretation.

Presenter and source: Jannes Lorenzen (Aktienrebell); the study is attributed in the video to Hendrik Bessembinder.