BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025 — Lifetime Stock Returns: Positive Arithmetic Mean vs. Negative Median
Extreme Skewness of Stock Returns — The majority of individual US equities failed to outperform one-month Treasury bills over their lifetimes: highlighting extreme positive skewness.
The plate
Across 29,754 common stocks tracked throughout their entire public tenure, the mean buy-and-hold return is +30,621% while the median is -6.87%. Only 48.22% delivered positive returns, and just 27.60% outperformed the value-weighted market index.
What this page answers
This static page is built to answer searches for BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025. It summarizes the live dataset behind the Lifetime Stock Returns: Positive Arithmetic Mean vs. Negative Median panel and links to the full interactive chart.
Across 29,754 common stocks tracked throughout their entire public tenure, the mean buy-and-hold return is +30,621% while the median is -6.87%. Only 48.22% delivered positive returns, and just 27.60% outperformed the value-weighted market index. The data is refreshed by the History of Market pipeline and published as a stable JSON endpoint for research, citation, and AI-agent use.
Data & Source
GET /api/static/bessembinder-2026.json — Canonical dataset endpoint.
Exchange closing prices · Company filings · Robert Shiller · FRED · NBER.
FAQ
Where does this data come from?
History of Market combines public market and macro datasets — exchange closing prices, company filings, Robert Shiller, FRED, NBER, and the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook (Dimson–Marsh–Staunton). The exact endpoint for this panel is linked below.
How often is it updated?
Daily-tier datasets refresh after the U.S. market close, with a broader weekly refresh on Sunday. The timestamp shown on this page comes from the JSON payload.
Can I use the data?
Yes, for research and education with attribution to History of Market. Upstream data sources retain their own terms.