Wall Street's lost decade eclipses an upbeat 2009

"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 US economy and the stock market were further wounded by the Sept. 11 attacks.

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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 per cent this decade, compared with a gain of more than 300 per cent 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 per centage 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% -1.07% 15.31% 18.20%

Cons Discr 2.46% -1.31% 15.43% 17.49%

Cons Staples 2.75% 5.12% 12.80% 15.34%

Energy 7.18% 9.38% 8.78% 12.80%

Financials -5.08% -2.74% 15.49% 18.72%

Health Care 1.01% 2.62% 16.23% 18.75%

Industrials -1.15% 0.81% 13.80% 16.29%

Info Tech -7.76% -7.26% 28.68% 30.03%

Materials 1.95% 4.38% 7.43% 10.14%

Telecom -10.04% -6.96% 12.44% 16.43%

Utilities 1.14% 4.98% 3.22% 9.15%

- - - -

S&P 500 ANNUALIZED RETURNS

STOCK TOTAL RETURN

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

1930s -5.26% 0.97%

1940s 2.98% 8.73%

1950s 13.58% 19.21%

1960s 4.39% 7.75%

1970s 1.60% 5.88%

1980s 12.59% 17.55%

1990s 15.31% 18.21%

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

- - - -

TOP 5 DOW INDUSTRIAL WINNERS/LOSERS

(Jan 1999 - 12/18/2009)

LOSERS: % CHANGE

- General Electric -54.18%

- Merck & Co -46.49%

- DuPont -39.94%

- Alcoa Inc -21.78%

- Coca-Cola Co -14.89%

WINNERS:

- United Technologies Corp 155.49%

- Caterpillar Inc 148.65%

- 3M Co 127.68%

- Hewlett-Packard Co. 92.70%

- Exxon Mobil Corp 86.56%

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.

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Sources: Standard & Poor's and Dow Jones Indexes