[deadbabe]

Finally people can stop pointing to the Japanese stock market as an example of a crash that never recovered.

[nmfisher]

The lesson is still relevant though - i.e. if you bought shares in the top 100 Japanese companies in 1989, it would have taken you ~35 years to break even in nominal terms. That's clearly a bad investment.

[Grimburger]

Forgetting dividends here.

[thsksbd]

And you are forgetting that the index's underlying measure, the yen, has lost value and the NIKKEI has only reached 1989's nominal value.

[mdorazio]

Roughly 27 years with dividend reinvestment (yes, really).

[thsksbd]

30 years to reach nominal parity? Normalize out inflation and the Nikkei still sucks - despite Japan's infamously low inflation.

[xyzzy4747]

Well it also paid dividends the entire time too which doesn’t get factored into the price. So maybe it matched up with inflation. I don’t know either way. You’d have to compare the total return with the total inflation.

[dosinga]

Inflation was about 0.5% and dividend yield around 1% so it's still up

[kortilla]

It hasn’t. Adjust for inflation and include the risk free rate of return and it’s an ugly picture.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

>> Adjust for inflation and include the risk free rate of return

You should choose one of those two, not both.

[echelon]

> Finally people can stop pointing to the Japanese stock market as an example of a crash that never recovered.

Except it's not the same yen to yen comparison on account of inflation.

[mekster]

Depends on your definition of "never". 35 years does sound like "never" for many people.