The Holding Period

Our Mission

Most financial commentary is built around short time horizons: this quarter's earnings, next year's macro outlook, or near-term central bank policy. The Holding Period exists to serve a different kind of investor — one who measures success in decades, not quarters.

We study what happens to capital over the very long run: how valuations, dividends, inflation, and economic cycles interact to determine multi-decade real returns. Our research draws on more than a century of continuous market data and the body of academic work in empirical finance.

Our Philosophy

We believe that the most important variable in investing is time — and that extending one's time horizon is one of the few truly reliable sources of edge available to individual investors. Markets are noisy over days, weeks, and even years. But over decades, the underlying economics of compounding capital in productive enterprises tend to assert themselves with remarkable consistency.

This conviction shapes everything we write. Rather than making point predictions about markets, we focus on the base rates: the distributions of historical outcomes across different holding periods, valuations, and market regimes.

Our Principles

• I
  Evidence Over Narrative Every claim we make is grounded in historical data. We distrust compelling stories that aren't supported by numbers.
• II
  Decades, Not Quarters Our analysis focuses on holding periods of 10, 20, and 30+ years. We believe this is the most underserved time horizon in financial media.
• III
  Intellectual Honesty We present the data as it is, including periods when markets performed terribly. Understanding bad outcomes is as important as celebrating good ones.
• IV
  Institutional-Grade Rigor We apply the same analytical standards used by institutional asset managers and academic researchers — without the jargon or the conflicts of interest.

What We Cover

Our research spans equity market history, long-run valuation metrics (with particular emphasis on the Shiller CAPE), dividend theory, secular market cycles, and the mathematics of compounding. We draw on data from the U.S. equity market dating to 1871 and international markets where data quality allows.

We do not cover individual stocks, short-term trading strategies, or tactical asset allocation. Our focus is the big picture over the very long run.