The Dow hit 380 in 1929, and didn’t get that high again until 1954.
It was at 600 in both 1959 and 1974. Because inflation was high then, that was about a 40% loss over 15 years when adjusting for inflation.
The 1929 to 1954 0% nominal gain also represents about a 40% inflation adjusted loss over a 25 year period.
While a lot of people are worried about inflation hurting the stock market, I think the larger risk is the share of GDP going to public company profits could decrease substantially due to populist redistributive policies. Both direct cash transfers, but also things like interest rate caps on credit cards and antitrust cases that hurt the profitability of tech monopolies.
We’ll see if the Dems hold Congress next year. If they do, and Biden continues to be more substantially more popular than Trump, ramped up taxes on corporations could be the result.
