All investment return data on AssetVS comes from the Jordà-Schularick-Taylor (JST) Macrohistory Database (Release 6, 2022) — a peer-reviewed academic dataset maintained by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, University of Bonn, and UC Davis.
The JST database is one of the most comprehensive sources of long-run asset return data available, covering 18 advanced economies from 1870 to 2020. AssetVS uses data from 1961 onward across 16 countries where consistent coverage exists for all five asset classes.
Citation: Jordà, Òscar, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. 2019. "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(3), 1225–1298.
| Asset | JST Variable | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 📈 Stocks (Equities) | eq_tr |
Total return on the domestic equity market, including dividends and capital gains. |
| 📊 Government Bonds | bond_tr |
Total return on long-term (typically 10-year) government bonds, including coupon payments. |
| 🏠 Real Estate (Housing) | housing_tr |
Total return on residential real estate, including rental income and price appreciation. |
| 🥇 Gold | gold_tr |
Nominal return on gold, measured in local currency terms. |
| 💵 Treasury Bills | bill_rate |
Short-term government bill rate, the closest proxy for "risk-free" returns. |
Currency exchange rates come from the JST database (xrusd — units of local currency per 1 USD).
For live exchange rates displayed on currency pages, we use market data from Yahoo Finance with a
1-hour cache refresh.
Cross-currency conversions use a USD bridge: local currency → USD → target currency. This is standard practice and matches how interbank FX markets operate.
All "Growth of $100" charts show the compounded growth of a $100 investment at the start of the selected period. Each year's return is applied sequentially:
Valuet = Valuet-1 × (1 + Returnt)
CAGR represents the smoothed annual return needed to grow the investment from start to end:
CAGR = (End Value / Start Value)1/n − 1
All returns shown on AssetVS are nominal total returns (not adjusted for inflation). This means they include price changes plus income (dividends, rent, coupons) but do not subtract inflation. We chose nominal returns for clarity and to avoid compounding assumptions about inflation measurement.
When viewing returns in a foreign currency, we convert using end-of-year exchange rates. A strong local currency will boost returns when viewed from abroad, while a weakening currency will reduce them. The calculator allows you to see returns in any of 15 currencies.
We include 16 countries where the JST database provides consistent data for all five asset classes from 1961 to 2020:
Found an error in the data? Have a suggestion? Reach us at [email protected].
