Wall Street's lost decade eclipses an upbeat 2009

Wall Street is on track to achieve its first annual advance in two years after staging a strong comeback from the March lows. But viewed in the context of the last decade, investors have little to cheer about.

The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 is down about 10 percent over the last 10 years, which puts Wall Street on course to register its first-ever negative decade on a total return basis, even with dividends reinvested.

"It's the pits," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York. "The bottom line is that this decade is not good for investors. It was a lost decade to some degree."

Even the Great Depression in the 1930s, which followed the stock market crash in October 1929 and spanned one of the worst periods for stock investing, turned out positive as dividends helped investors cushion some of the turbulence.

The overriding catalyst for poor returns are the two bear markets that bookended the decade. The first came after the technology bubble collapsed in March 2000, just as the decade got under way. The pain was only compounded by the recession of 2001, which lasted just eight months. The U.S. economy and the stock market were further wounded by the Sept. 11 attacks.

The going got even tougher as the economy slid into an even worse recession in December 2007, barely two months after the Dow and the S&P 500 set lifetime closing highs.

Excluding dividends, the S&P 500 Index shows a drop of almost 25 percent this decade, compared with a gain of more than 300 percent over the 1990s, he added.

What follows is a snapshot of annualized sector performance for the 10 S&P 500 industry groups over the last 10 years. The "stock change" column in the table below represents percentage changes for stock only, with no dividends or distributions added in.

ZEROs (12/99-12/18/09) ROARING '90s (12/89-12/99)

STOCK TOTAL STOCK TOTAL

CHANGE RETURN CHANGE RETURN

S&P 500 - 2.84 pct -1.07 pct 15.31 pct 18.20 pct

Cons Discr 2.46 pct -1.31 pct 15.43 pct 17.49 pct

Cons Staples 2.75 pct 5.12 pct 12.80 pct 15.34 pct

Energy 7.18 pct 9.38 pct 8.78 pct 12.80 pct

Financials -5.08 pct -2.74 pct 15.49 pct 18.72 pct

Health Care 1.01 pct 2.62 pct 16.23 pct 18.75 pct

Industrials -1.15 pct 0.81 pct 13.80 pct 16.29 pct

Info Tech -7.76 pct -7.26 pct 28.68 pct 30.03 pct

Materials 1.95 pct 4.38 pct 7.43 pct 10.14 pct

Telecom -10.04 pct -6.96 pct 12.44 pct 16.43 pct

Utilities 1.14 pct 4.98 pct 3.22 pct 9.15 pct

- - - -

S&P 500 ANNUALIZED RETURNS

STOCK TOTAL RETURN

Jan,'26-Dec,'29 19.64 pct 19.64 pct

1930s -5.26 pct 0.97 pct

1940s 2.98 pct 8.73 pct

1950s 13.58 pct 19.21 pct

1960s 4.39 pct 7.75 pct

1970s 1.60 pct 5.88 pct

1980s 12.59 pct 17.55 pct

1990s 15.31 pct 18.21 pct

Dec,'99-12/18/09 -2.84 pct -1.07 pct

- - - -

TOP 5 DOW INDUSTRIAL WINNERS/LOSERS

(Jan 1999 - 12/18/2009)

LOSERS: PCT CHANGE

- General Electric -54.18 pct

- Merck & Co -46.49 pct

- DuPont -39.94 pct

- Alcoa Inc -21.78 pct

- Coca-Cola Co -14.89 pct

WINNERS:

- United Technologies Corp 155.49 pct

- Caterpillar Inc 148.65 pct

- 3M Co 127.68 pct

- Hewlett-Packard Co. 92.70 pct

- Exxon Mobil Corp 86.56 pct

Note: Stocks that have been Dow components for less than 10 years, or were removed from the blue-chip average during the decade, have been excluded. There have been numerous changes made in the Dow Jones industrial average since 1999, including the ouster of such stocks as General Motors, Citigroup and American International Group.

Sources: Standard & Poor's and Dow Jones Indexes

(Reporting by Ellis Mnyandu; Editing by Jan Paschal)