The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns

The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns, issued by Callan LLC, tracks returns for the past 20 years ending December 2023. This table pictorially represents the returns from most public asset classes available to investors and many are represented in Callan Family Office client portfolios.

The returns are ranked annually from best to worst. Given the long list of concerns that investors grappled with at the beginning of 2023, these results may come as a pleasant surprise to many investors.

A few observations worth noting:

• In 2023, all asset classes generated a positive return, the first year since 2019 that this has happened. Over the past 20 years, this has occurred 45% of the time.
• As you might expect in a strong market, the top returning assets were dominated by equities, a complete reversal from 2022. Sixty-seven percent of the asset classes generated a return exceeding 9% for the year.
• The bottom three performers — cash, U.S. and International fixed income –generated positive returns in the 5% range. These returns are in line with long-term historical averages and benefited from the rising rate environment that largely took place in 2022.
• U.S. equities, both large and small cap, remained near the top of the chart in 2023, continuing a trend of outperformance. Over the past 10 years, U.S. stocks continue to significantly outperform all other asset classes represented in this chart.
• The “worst” return of 5% from cash represents the best “worst” return over the past 20 years.

This table conveys that no one asset class outperforms in every environment and highlights the importance of diversification.

If you’d like to discuss further, please reach out to your Callan Family Office team for additional information.

To download a PDF of the Callan LLC Periodic Table, please click here.

Callan Family Office (“CFO”) is providing the information from Callan LLC (“Callan”) for information purposes only.  CFO is not involved in drafting or reviewing the content.  Although we believe Callan and its content to be reliable, we make no representations as to their accuracy or completeness.

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