However, actions, real estate … The most profitable investments on 5, 15, 30 and 40 years

How much would you have won if you had bet on the right placements in recent years? Actions, real estate, gold, booklet A … The performance differences can be substantial over time. Here is the classification of the most profitable investments, according to the investment horizon.

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It is a necessary recall bite after weeks of high aerobatics on the financial markets: actions are the most efficient placement over time. This is confirmed by the latest version of the study “40 years of comparative performance (1984-2024)” led by the Institute of Real Estate and Land Savings (IEIF). An inconvenient observation for an investor who would have embarked on the financial markets in early 2025.

First, because it would be losing: the CAC 40 accuses a drop of -1.73%since the start of the year, the S&P 500 of -7.38%, the composite nasdaq of almost -12%… In addition, it would have experienced roller coaster, with indices that have made Yo -Yo in recent weeks: from April 1 to 5, the Nasda 9%, before resuming 12.6% in one session, Wednesday, April 10.

Actions, the most efficient and resilient placement

In short, at first glance, “Boursicoter” appears as a very volatile investment – subject to strong variations from one day to the next – and, above all, losing! All the opposite of what it is really in the long term, according to IEIF data, that is to say an ultra-resentable and resilient placement. Indeed, according to this new edition of their annual study, the actions display the highest performance over 40 years: +11.8% per year on average Over the period 1984-2024, despite the crises of the “Internet bubble”, from 2008, COVID-19, sovereign debts, etc.

To put it differently, the equity markets manage to collect the declines caused by the long time crises. And, provided you don’t need his money for a while, the investor is there in terms of return. Among the other most paid placements on this period, we find mainly real estate: housing in Paris (+10.12%), Les Foncières Immobilières (+9.5%), collective investment organizations in real estate or OPCI (+8.17%) and civil real estate investment companies – SCPI – (+7.51%). However, this does not mean that this asset class will continue to display such yields in the coming years: “The values ​​of housing have very strongly increased in large cities in the last 30 years, as these areas became more tense. But in time, this effect is going for the time being fading ”warns Stéphanie Galiègue, Deputy Managing Director of IEIF.

Safe savings products and SCPIs have suffered since 2019

We thus see that the return on real estate investment in Paris goes to +7.61% over 30 years (1994-2024), then +5.35% over 15 years (2009-2024). Conversely, the investment in equities in the major global indices retains a robust return (respectively +8.82% over 30 years and +7.8% over 15 years). This does not appear on the other hand with the smallest focal length, 5 years (2019-2024): mined by the stock market crash of March 2020, the shares only display a return on +6.17%.

But “The interest of this period is that it incorporates the health crisis. We thus see that the SCPIs, hitherto very invested in offices and in shops, fall strongly in terms of yield ”explains Stéphanie Galiègue. Indeed, during this tight period, the degradation of the real estate assets of many SCPIs is noted, with an internal rate of return (Sort) which collapses at +2.15%. Another salient fact, secure savings products, whose French are the most fond, have not done better than an inflation of 2.68% on average since 2019: +2.02% return on average for life insurance, +1.79% for booklet A and +0.24% for monetary funds. Out of these five very uncertain years (COVVI-19, war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East …), it is gold that pulls out of the game, with a mirific performance of +11.27%*.

*Note that the IEIF study does not include cryptocurrencies, and in particular Bitcoin, which over the 2019-2024 period displays a performance of more than 2,600% (from around 3,300 euros to almost 90,000 euros).