US stockmarket returns since 1825 [Economist]

Terrible chart. Why plot the negative returns below the x-axis? Look at the chart in this post, which provides the same information about the S&P 500. To me, the salient point is not that 2008 was such a bad year. It’s the fact that the annual returns appear totally normal (i.e., Gaussian) — or at least “mound shaped” as they say in statistics classes.

This contradicts what gurus like Nasim Taleb have been saying. Looking at the data, 2008 was not a “Black Swan” at all, but rather was totally consistent with past performance of the market. The error, perhaps, was the belief that annual returns were no longer what they had been — that we had entered a new era.