FinObservatory

Rate of return on everything

Finland

What one unit of currency became

Invested in 1920 and held to 2020, after inflation. Equities ended at 322.5x, housing at 2974.4x, bonds at 22.7x and bills at 0.8x. The scale is logarithmic, because over a century of compounding a linear axis would flatten three of these four lines into the floor. The dashed line is 1.0: below it, the asset lost purchasing power.

1x10x100x1,000x1925195019752000323x3,000x23x0.8x
EquitiesHousingBondsBillsbanking crisis (JST)

Source: Jorda-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database, Release 6 (Jorda, Knoll, Kuvshinov, Schularick & Taylor) Compounded over the 99 years in which all four assets were reported. 2 years inside the 1920-2020 window are missing at least one asset and are skipped, so the series is not an unbroken run of 101 years. Shaded bars are JST's own banking-crisis years. Methodology

Compound annual real return

AssetReal returnExcluding the warsVolatilityObservationsSpan
Equities4.98%6.14%30.001251896-2020
Housing8.41%9.42%15.24991920-2020
Bonds1.49%3.86%14.481501871-2020
Bills-0.64%1.47%10.321501871-2020

Source: Jorda-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database, Release 6 (Jorda, Knoll, Kuvshinov, Schularick & Taylor) Nominal returns deflated by JST's own consumer price index. No observation for this country is flagged as interpolated. Methodology

Coverage for Finland

Equities 125 years, housing 99, bonds 151, bills 151. JST flags 5 banking crisis years for this country, marked on the chart. An average taken over a short series is a weaker statistic than one taken over a long series, and the counts are here so you can tell which you are reading.

Methodology