Stocks versus Treasury Bills

A paper reports that the majority of U.S. common stocks that have appeared in the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database since 1926 have lifetime buy-and-hold returns less than one-month Treasuries. When stated in terms of lifetime dollar wealth creation, the best-performing 4% of listed companies explain the net gain for the entire US stock market since 1926, as other stocks collectively matched Treasury bills.

See H. Bessembinder, Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? Journal of Financial Economics (2018) Volume 129, pp. 440-457.