Callan periodic table of investment returns

The Callan periodic table of investment returns is patterned after Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements, and features well-known, industry-standard market indices as proxies for each asset class.

The table shows returns for ten asset classes, ranked from best to worst. Each asset class is color-coded for easy tracking. It was created in 1999 by Jay Kloepfer.

Overview

The chart aims to show the importance of diversification across asset classes (stocks versus bonds), investment styles (growth versus value), capitalizations (large versus small) and equity markets (U.S. versus international).

The table is shown below.

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The rankings change every year, which demonstrates two key principles of investing:

• Diversification: by owning the entire market (all of the asset classes), susceptibility to changes in market returns is minimized.
• Past performance does not predict future performance.

History and changes

The composition of the table has changed over the years.

Year	Changes made
1999	Created with eight asset classes.
2010	Emerging markets asset class added, bring number to nine.
2013	the addition of Barclay's Corporate high yield brought the total to ten.
2017	"MSCI World ex USA" replaced "MSCI EAFE". The entire table was rebuilt using "MSCI World ex USA".
2019	The S&P 500 Growth, S&P 500 Value, Russel 2000 Growth, and Russel 2000 Value were replaced with Global Bonds ex-US, Cash equivalent (90 day T-Bills), and Real Estate. The entire table was rebuilt.

The prior spreadsheets are at Callan Periodic Chart 2017: Dispersion of Asset Class Returns and Callan Periodic Table 2017: Statistics

How to read the table

For example: Real estate (a measure of the stock performance of companies engaged in specific real estate activities in the North American, European, and Asian real estate markets). Starting at the left side, this measure ranked:

2004 - 1st 2005 - 2nd 2006 - 1st 2007 - 9th 2008 - 8th

2009 - 3rd 2010 - 2nd 2011 - 7th 2012 - 1st 2013 - 5th

2014 - 1st 2015 - 4th 2016 - 5th 2017 - 6th 2018 - 6th

2019 - 4th 2020 - 9th 2021 - 2nd 2022 - 9th 2023 - 6th

Putting the table into perspective

Periodic tables provide a great visual about diversification benefits, but tend to be more qualitative than quantitative. The simple ranking from best to worse does not allow you to easily appreciate the scaling of annual returns.

The following dispersion graph (distribution spread of returns over time) is therefore useful to put such a periodic table in perspective. Notice how the difference between the highest return (blue) and lowest return (red) changes over time.

(View Google Spreadsheet in browser, then File --> Download as to download the file.) Note: If the spreadsheet is blank, select a different sheet, then back to that sheet. The image will be refreshed.

In addition, it is challenging to get a sense of returns averaged over a period of time with a periodic table. The following table of statistics is therefore useful to consider.

(View Google Spreadsheet in browser, then File --> Download as to download the file.) Note: If the spreadsheet is blank, select a different sheet, then back to that sheet. The image will be refreshed.

One statistic that is sometimes informative is the "Coefficient of variation" (CV), which is simply the standard deviation divided by the mean. This is sometimes called the "coefficient of relative variation." It is the inverse of a signal-to-noise ratio, thus it is a noise to signal ratio. The lower the ratio of standard deviation to mean return, the better your risk-return tradeoff.

Over the past 20 years (1998 - 2017), the lowest coefficient of variation is "Aggregate Bonds" (0.69); the highest is World Ex USA (2.77).

Create your own periodic table

A spreadsheet for creating your own periodic table is available in this Bogleheads forum topic: "Playing with Callan's periodic tables of investment returns".

The latest version and download instructions are in this post, which is a direct download from Google Drive.

Detailed instructions and revision history are in the "README" tab.

See also

• Risk and return: an introduction
• Reversion to the mean

External links

• Periodic table of annual returns, on finiki, the Canadian financial wiki. Total returns for Canadian investors.
• Periodic Tables, by Callan LLC. Includes links to the "classic" table, a collection of tables ("classic"and 10 additional versions including the indices relative to inflation, real estate indices, and hedge fund sub-strategies), and a table of monthly rankings.
• The Importance of Diversification, asset classes for the past ten years, from Allianz Global Investors - Literature Center.
• Periodic Table of Investments, asset classes for the past ten years, from Janus Henderson Investors
• Periodic table of sector returns from usfunds.com, covers years 2005 - 2014.
• Periodic table of commodity returns from usfunds.com, covers years 2001 - 2010.

Forum discussions

• Bogleheads forum topic: "[wiki] Callan periodic table of investment returns", LadyGeek. Jan 16, 2021
• Bogleheads forum topic: "2017 Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns", triceratop. Jan 06, 2018
• Bogleheads forum topic: "2015 Asset Class Returns", Tamales. Jan 01, 2016. A comprehensive list of asset class returns compiled by forum member Tamales.