Going off topic, the analysis of the US stock markets that suggest they out perform bank deposits is also massively skewed by the start time.  During the 1920's and 1930's there were some huge movements.  If you started from 1950 (say) you get quite a different result.  Also, you need to really compare those returns against something like treasury bonds to account for the underlying (approximation) of risk free rate.

This link has some interesting observations about the long-flat periods  http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.co.nz/2008/10/100-years-of-stock-market-history.html

Still, holding a bucket of stocks like ArthurAnderson, Enron, MCIWorld would have seen some great paper returns (until the fraud crashed them).  More recently AIG, (insert name)-investment bank, and GM probably should have been left to fail.  Still, there are some other darlings of the markets that are based on niche technology and hype which could fall from grace much faster than their ascendancy.


And, the reference I was looking for earlier: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-10-10/investing/34350951_1_fund-managers-active-managers-stock-funds
In the five years through June, the study reported, slightly fewer than one-third of domestic equity funds beat the total return of the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index.