In the Nineties Amgen stock had a compounded annual return of a lofty 52%.

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But over that same time period, equity investors earned an annual compounded return of less than 4%.

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Peter Lynch's compounded average annual investment return during the 13 years was 29.2%.

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Over the past decade, PAA has produced an compounded 26% annual return.

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The dispersion is somewhat larger when measuring average annual returns (annualized return, recall, is the compounded or geometric rate of return during a multiple-year time period).

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The vertical axis (Y axis) is the compounded portfolio return and the horizontal axis (X axis) is portfolio risk as measured by the annual standard deviation of return.

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