On... a 20 Year Experiment

I'm running a 20 year experiment - that is to achieve a net worth of 1 million dollars in 20 years time. Why is it an experiment? Because it is based on investing in the stock market and stock market futures are unpredictable.


If we can't forecast the future, does that mean we should do nothing? Probably not. We can at least have a look at history to get a feel of what might happen (history does not repeat, but it does rhyme - Mark Twain). So, lets have a look at what 20 years of investing look like.

For example, what if I had started investing 20 years ago (1999), how much would my net worth be if I cash out end of this year (2019). If we take the All ORDS index as a proxy for returns - The All ORDS index was roughly 3153 at the end of 1999 and I estimate it to be roughly 6773 end of this year. That means 10,000$ invested in 1999 would be roughly 21,484$ end of this year. 

How about if we started end of 1998 instead and cashed out end of 2018? The All ORDS index was roughly 2813 at the end of 1998 and roughly 5709 at the end of 2018. That means 10,000$ invested in 1998 would be roughly 20,294$ at the end of 2018. We can do this exercise all the way back to 1979 (meaning start investing 1979 and cash out 1999), and see what 20 year investment returns are at different starting dates.

And the chart looks something like this.

There are a lot of conclusions you can draw from this exercise but the most important one that I would like to point out is that the returns are always positive. I would love to achieve a million dollars in 20 years, but even if I don't, at least history says I probably won't lose money trying.