Just looked back at how the S&P 500 actually performed over the last decade and the numbers are pretty solid. We're talking 261% total return if you include dividends, which breaks down to about 13.6% annually. That's the kind of average stock market return most people would be happy with. The index hit some wild swings last year with all the tariff drama, but ultimately recovered pretty well. What's interesting is how wrong some of the Wall Street forecasts ended up being. Back in mid-2025, 17 major firms were predicting the S&P 500 would basically go sideways for the rest of that year, with a median target of 6,400. Turns out the market had other plans. The top holdings like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple basically carried a lot of the momentum. I think the lesson here is that trying to predict exact year-end targets is pretty much a waste of time. The average stock market return over longer periods tells you more than any quarterly forecast ever will.