Charts are great way to visually represent data. The widely popular phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” is indeed true, in most scenarios. However sometimes one has to dig deeper into the data shown in the chart in order to get a better understanding the information being displayed.

From an article titled Real Estate: More Than Just a Home by David Lee, fund manager at T.Rowe Price:

Mention real estate, and many people think of the place they call home. In the investment world, however, the sector encompasses a broad array of commercial opportunities spanning the globe. And, as a sector, U.S. real estate has been among the top performers of the past decade.

The Wilshire U.S. Real Estate Securities Index outperformed the S&P 500 Index by a wide margin over the 10 years ended December 31, 2012, and turned in a stellar 17.55% return through the turmoil and uncertainties of the past year (see chart below). Global real estate did even better with the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Real Estate Index, returning 28.65% in 2012.

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Source: Real Estate: More Than Just a Home, T.Rowe Price

Though the chart looks pretty and shows real estate assets outperforming stocks, one can argue whether the actual return earned by an investor is higher with REITs as opposed to stocks, if the investor held these assets in a taxable account.

U.S. stocks as shown by the dark blue bar had a total return of 16.0% in 2012 and REITs as yielded a 17.6% total return. REITs therefore outperformed stocks by 1.6%. This can hardly be called “stellar” because dividends paid out REITs are taxed as ordinary income for tax purposes whereas dividends earned from stocks can be “Qualified Dividends” subject to a lower tax rate of just 15% even for investors in the top tax bracket. Though REITs may assign a portion of the dividends paid as qualified at the end of the year the majority of the dividends will still be “Unqualified Dividends”  that will incur a higher tax rate. Generally the ordinary income tax rate for most people will be around 28% to 33%. Hence though REITs had a slightly higher return than stocks last year, when taxes are considered the total return for stocks will be higher. So in reality an investor would have been better off investing in stocks in a taxable account instead of real estate securities. The same logic can be applied for the 10-year period as well.

For an investor with a tax-deferred account such as Traditional IRA, REITs would have been a better option since they had a higher return both in the 1-year and 10-year periods. A  Roth IRA would be even better since the original investment and earnings can be withdrawn without any tax consequences during retirement.

Investors should definitely allocate some of the assets in their portfolios to REITs for diversification purposes. However it is highly important to determine in which type of account one has to hold REITs in due to the tax issue discussed above.

Related ETFs:

• iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index Fund (IYR)
• Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ)
• SPDR Dow Jones International Real Estate Fund (RWX)
• SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)

Disclosure: Long RWX

Here is a chart that shows the various players in the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S.:

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One of the fast-growing sectors within the healthcare industry is the pharmacy benefit management(PBM) business. The companies in this space provide administration services to control drug cots to patients and other clients. Express Scripts Holding Company(ESRX) is of the top firms in the PBM sector.

Another type of player operating in this industry is the pharma distributors. These companies are the wholesalers of drugs. They buy drugs in bulk from manufacturers and supply hospitals and pharmacies after jacking up the prices by several percentage points for acting as the middle men. These companies do not contribute anything productive other than to buy in bulk and sell after a markup. These companies are analogous to auto dealers. One does not need to be a genius to figure out that auto dealers do not contribute nothing to the society other than to make high profits from unsuspecting car buyers. Some of the major firms in this sector include  AmerisourceBergen Corporation (ABC), Cardinal Health (CAH) and McKesson Corporation (MCK).

Other players in the industry include the insurers, pharmacy companies, hospital companies and so forth. One of the reasons for the atrocious prices of drugs can be attributed to so many players involved in the pharmaceutical industry.

Source: Angles and Perspectives, Q2, 2013,  the Quarterly Newsletter of PSG Asset Management

Major U.S. markets reached all-time highs last week. For example, the S&P 500 reached a record high of 1,687.18 surpassing the earlier high attained in 2007 before the global financial crisis.

Multi-year return of S&P 500:

Source: Yahoo Finance

All the cheer and excitement that followed for reaching the milestones may be premature. This is because on an inflation-adjusted basis equities are still a long way from reaching new records.

According to a report by T.Rowe Price, at the end of first quarter the S&P 500 index stood 30% below the inflation-adjusted peak reached during the dot-com mania in 1999 (not including dividends).

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Source:  Real Returns Can Preserve Purchasing Power, T.Rowe Price

The same report noted that while in the short-term stocks did not yield an inflation-beating returns, in the long run such as 20-year or 30-year periods stocks beat inflation.

From the report:

The table below shows the percentage of rolling investment periods in which various assets beat inflation from 1950 through 2012. Over shorter investment horizons of one, five, or even 10 years, stocks failed to outpace inflation in more than 20% of the periods, but bonds and cash also had spotty records.

Percentage of rolling periods in which stocks, bonds, cash and selected portfolio strategies Outpace Inflation: December 31, 1949-December 31, 2012

Over 20- or 30-year periods, however, stocks beat inflation in every one, while bonds had positive real (inflation-adjusted) returns 92% of the time. This means that bond returns lagged inflation in 32 of the 397 rolling 30-year periods (calculated monthly), most of these occurring in the 30-year periods ending in the mid-1960s through the early to mid-1980s.

Also, the magnitude of the outperformance for stocks was significant. Over the entire 63-year period, large-cap stocks had an average annual real rate of return of 7.0% compared with about 2.6% for bonds and 0.8% for cash (30-day Treasury bills). Stocks also outperformed bonds on a real return basis in virtually all of the 20- and 30-year periods, usually by a wide margin. Of course, stocks are generally more risky than bonds, but the volatility of stocks is significantly reduced over longer-term periods.

It should noted that the actual return than an investor receives will be even lower than the inflation-adjusted returns since taxes, trading commissions, expenses and fees for ETF and mutual fund investments have to be taken into account when calculating the actual return on an investment. But dividends from income-generating assets may help offset some of these expenses. In summary, stocks are the best financial  asset classes  to own for generating  an inflation-beating return over the long-term.

Related ETF:

• SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)
• Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG)
• SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY)
• iShares Dow Jones U.S. Select Dividend ETF (DVY)
• PowerShares Dividend Achievers ETF (PFM)

Disclosure: No Positions