Regular 10% returns per year in the stock market are a myth. So are 9% returns and 11% returns. In introductory finance courses, you might be taught that the stock market climbs around 10% per year. While this might be true historically when you’re talking about long-run, annualized average returns,it’s actually quite rare to have individual years that actually 10% returns. Even over extended periods, it’s hard to see any pattern of stable annualized returns. US Trust’s Joseph Quinlan illustrates this reality about stock market returns in the chart above. (Bloomberg) In the past five years (as of end 2015), we’ve actually experienced stellar 15.6% annualized returns. That’s certainly a nice surprise for anyone expecting 10% returns. “Interestingly, notwithstanding the robust returns of this decade, five-year annualized returns over the second half of the 1990s were even stronger—tallying +28.5% between 1995 and 1999,” Quinlan noted in a Nov. ......