Section 3 places the modern US market record in broader historical and global context. Moving beyond the 1926–2025 US evidence base, it examines US stocks and bonds before 1925, global markets over the last 125 years, London markets, commodities, Japan, China, earlier international markets, and long-run index-construction issues.
The section’s purpose is to show that the United States was an unusually successful market, not the only possible long-run outcome. By widening the evidence across countries, centuries, and market regimes, this section of Exponential Wealth: Centuries of Stock and Bond Returns seeks to help readers understand survivorship bias, success bias, market disruption, and the limits of extrapolating from modern US history.
