I have two charts today that may alter your perception of how you view returns in your planning. We had a good year in the US stock markets, and the first chart will help you contextualize the performance of the market year-to-date in the grand scheme of all YTD returns for the past 25 years: The second chart shows us the performance of the Russell 2000 for the past 500 trading days in this bull market, with small-cap data for the past 45 years:

The Role of Luck in Investing

We can deduce that the performance of the large caps, represented by the S&P 500, has been one of the best in the past 25 years. We can also deduce that the performance of the Russell 2000 was the worst in the past 45 years. The small caps have never done this badly n a bull market given...