Real Rate Of Return

  

Categories: Investing, Metrics

Real, as in: inflation-adjusted.

Example:

In the last decade, your investment compounded at 7%. But inflation during that period afteraged 2% a year. The real rate of return then? About 5% a year.

Why the "about"? Well, inflation averaged 2%. But it may have been 5% early in the decade in year 2 and 3...and then 0 for 3 years. So the data might skew to the early years, and with the power of compounding, drift a bit one way or another. But since inflation is a very much guessed-at and somewhat relative number, most people don't do "precision math," and wiggle the numbers around. Econ is, after all, a back-of-the-envelope discipline.

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Finance: What are Gross Domestic Product...8 Views

00:00

Finance Allah Shmoop What are gross domestic product GDP and

00:07

gross national product GNP So how do you know how

00:13

great your country is Well you can measure how many

00:16

missiles you have or you can count the number of

00:18

Olympic gold medals You've one or you can count the

00:21

number of Starbucks locations you have all over your country

00:24

for you can measure the strength of your economy Well

00:27

how do you do that Economists used to main measures

00:30

One is called gross domestic product called gross national product

00:34

Gross domestic product might sound like what happens when you

00:36

flush a baby alligator down the toilet And three years

00:39

later it crawls back out looking for its mommy But

00:42

in actuality it represents the total value of all the

00:45

stuff you make in your country along with all the

00:47

services you provide You know like legal services and dental

00:51

cleaning services and stuff like that And you know that's

00:54

provided by your citizens There You live on the sovereign

00:57

island nation of squish squad Scary Located just offshore of

01:02

Norway you are one of twelve inhabitants and all of

01:05

you fish for herring all day Each of you catch

01:08

an average of ten pounds of herring every day Hearing

01:10

sells for about ten bucks a pound and everyone works

01:13

two hundred days a year so multiply that all up

01:16

and you get twelve People work in two hundred days

01:19

a year each each catching ten pounds each day with

01:23

each pound selling for ten bucks And well you could

01:25

say the GDP of squish squad Scary is two hundred

01:29

forty thousand dollars That's the value of all the stuff

01:32

you're country made in a year Meanwhile elsewhere in the

01:35

world the numbers get a bit higher For instance the

01:37

GDP of the U S was about nineteen trillion dollars

01:40

in two thousand seventeen so Well yeah that's a little

01:43

bit more But of course the U S has three

01:45

hundred twenty five million ish people in it instead of

01:49

the twelve squid squid aeons And its GDP includes things

01:53

like airplane manufacturing and high value financial transactions And you

01:58

know shmoop subscription sales instead of just herring fishing So

02:02

it makes sense that the U S economy would be

02:04

much much bigger toe Look at how an economy is

02:06

doing People usually watch how it changes over time say

02:09

one of your fellow squish Quaid Ian's starts fishing with

02:13

dynamite Well it's a new technique Output goes from ten

02:16

point today to twelve next year With the new output

02:19

your GDP goes two hundred eighty eight thousand from the

02:23

two forty and change before That's twenty percent GDP growth

02:27

in a year We'll guess what big complex economies like

02:30

the US pretty much never see growth rates like that

02:33

Economists usually consider it a healthy growth rate to be

02:36

more like two or three percent in a given year

02:38

Smaller countries and developing countries can have bigger growth rates

02:42

Right Like take China It's a big country biggest population

02:45

in the world with no more than a billion and

02:47

a half people But it's still racks up relatively high

02:50

GDP growth rates because of the rapid expansion of its

02:54

manufacturing base Right they optimize their farmers and take them

02:57

from growing turn ups and instead have them assemble semiconductors

03:01

and stuff like that way higher margin to sell a

03:03

semiconductor than a turnip As recently as two thousand ten

03:07

China put up annual GDP growth rates still in the

03:10

double digits like ten percent and hit double digits and

03:13

change for five consecutive years in the early two thousand

03:16

Well GDP doesn't always go up in nations around the

03:19

world The year after discovering dynamite fishing swish squad Ian's

03:23

suffered a Siri's of significant storms The number of work

03:26

days went down from two hundred to one ninety Everything

03:30

else stayed the same self In that year GDP fell

03:32

to two hundred seventy three thousand and change from the

03:35

two eighty eight It was the year before decline of

03:37

five percent Well he kind of is called that decline

03:40

a contraction if a contraction happens for two or more

03:43

quarters in a row so like two three months periods

03:46

in a row the country is considered to be in

03:48

a recession If the contractions air deep enough and last

03:51

long enough well then that's called the depression like it

03:54

goes on for a year Two years or three years

03:56

Both GDP and GNP measure the economic output of a

03:59

country but they used different definitions about what all that

04:03

entails Gross domestic product consists of all the products and

04:06

services made it given your inside the country So you

04:10

know made within the borders of the country made domestically

04:14

gross national product measures the stuff made by people or

04:17

companies from a country regardless of where it was actually

04:20

made like you're an American citizen No building pots or

04:24

pottery in Mexico We found that in the GNP number

04:27

so GDP tracks where it was made GNP tracks Who

04:30

made it So if an American it's a toilet cozy

04:33

while sitting in his living room in Des Moines that

04:36

gets included in both GDP and GNP However if an

04:40

American goes on vacation Teo Cameroon and it's a toilet

04:43

cozy in his hotel room there well that's included in

04:47

GNP but not in GDP was made by an American

04:51

but not in America Well meanwhile if the American comes

04:54

back home to Des Moines and a Scottish friend of

04:56

his comes over and it's a toilet cozy for him

04:59

that would count in GDP but not in GNP right

05:03

The toilet cozy was made in the US but not

05:06

by an American In the old days like before the

05:08

nineteen nineties GNP was typically used to track national economic

05:11

growth However with the dramatic rise of globalization around that

05:15

time GDP became much easier to track Eventually it became

05:18

the go to measure of growth to review Both GMP

05:22

and GDP track national economic output They both look at

05:25

the amount of goods and services produced by the country

05:27

though they have different working definitions about what that means

05:30

The size of GDP and GNP are impacted by the

05:32

size of a country In the level of economic and

05:34

technical sophistication Big complex economies like the US usually aspire

05:39

to modest growth like two or three percent smaller Countries

05:42

in developing economies can post much higher growth rates with

05:44

percentages in the double digits Not being all that uncommon

05:47

GDP measures the value of stuff produced within a country

05:50

regardless of who makes it GNP measures the value of

05:54

stuff made by citizens of a country regardless of where

05:57

it's made So if a squish squatty and citizen were

05:59

toe float a raft into Norwegian waters and catch some

06:02

herring there While that would count on GNP on their

06:05

books but not G Meanwhile if he invited a Norwegian

06:09

friend over for a day of fishing for anything that

06:11

Norwegian caught would count on the squish Wadi and GDP

06:15

but not on the squish Claudia and G N P

06:18

if the scratch Wadi Ins were to launch a surprise

06:20

attack on Norway However wealth and all bets would be 00:06:23.518 --> [endTime] off You just have to see who is

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