It is natural and tempting to assume that the capital market losses that occurred during the recent financial crisis represent a statistical outlier, a perfect storm, a rare, once in a century event—a black swan.

This is not at all the case.

An unsettling and eye-opening table in the current issue of the Financial Analysts Journal is reproduced below.

The data, provided as part of a guest editorial authored by Laurence B. Siegel, clearly show that large negative returns such as those experienced during the recent financial crisis were actually fairly common over the past 100 years.