Many countries in the world have a very small army. Some countries do not even have an army at all as shown in the interesting infographics below:
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Source: RFE/RL
The Vatican City has no army. Other countries with no standing armies include Panama and Haiti among others.
The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns is published every year by U.S. Global Investors. While The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns shows the returns for various asset classes this table is specific to review the returns of commodities. The latest edition of commodities returns table including the returns for 2018 is shown in the chart below:
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Source: U.S. Global Investors
The surprising winner among the major commodities last year was Palladium with a return of over 18%. Gold ended the year with a loss of about 2%.
The worst performer was crude oil as it plunged dramatically late in the year. Oil is an extremely volatile commodity as I have written in this blog before. So no one should be shocked by extreme volatility of this very important global commodity. In 2014, oil declined by over 45%.
Germany’s DAX Index has had a strong start this with a return of 3.1% compared to the poor performance last year. All of the major developed markets in Europe are in the positive so far this year. The Brexit drama continues and may dampen the markets’ upward movement should there be a no-deal hard Brexit.The S&P 500 is also up by 3.57% on price basis year-to-date.
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Prague Opera House, Prague, Czech Republic
Callan has published their latest edition of The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns with data from 1999 thru 2018. The table was first created by Jay Kloepfer and published in 1999. Since then the table has become widely popular as it is an excellent tool to analyze the importance of diversification among various asset classes.
Updated: The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns From 2000 to 2019: Chart
The Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns From 1999 to 2018:
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Source: Callan
Download:
In 2018, cash was king with a return of 1.87%. US stocks were down with large caps off by 4.38%. While US stocks were on solid upward trend for most of the year, from October they started declining dramatically and ended the year in red. The worst performing equities were emerging market equities with a loss of about 15%.
An investor with a diversified portfolio of cash, fixed income, US and foreign stocks, etc. would have performed relatively better than simply holding one asset type.
Earlier: