"Over the long term, there's only one direction the market will go"Successful investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant," Buffett has said.While stocks can be wildly unpredictable over shorter time periods, they are surprisingly predictable over long periods. Over periods of several decades, the stock market has generated annualized returns of 9% to 10% per year. Since 1965, the S&P 500 has produced annualized total returns of 9.9%, for example, and this includes the dot-com bust, Black Monday in 1987, and the Great Recession. The point: Even the worst crashes are rather meaningless when it comes to long-term returns."
