Well yes. We are talking in the context of buying an index in the 20s and holding it until the present day. I split the Japanese index’s performance into two periods, but I’m not sure what your point is because I’m commenting on the entire 90+ year timeframe. Buying straight after the crash would obviously have a different outcome, but that seems like you’re cherrypicking a particular date rather than me.

I shouldn't have to spell it out so much for you. You have no return for thirty years only if you cherry pick the top of that bubble in the late eighties. Start anywhere else and there is a positive return (ie what you said is false unless you cherry pick the start). You can do the same cherry picking in the US market and people frequently do. To look at long term average returns properly picking fair start and end dates is important. And then remember, we won't see growth over the next 100 years like the last hundred, so expect much lower returns. But the same is true for other assets as well. Bonds have negative real yields right now.

But I never said cherrypicked the 80s, I merely described what happened then. The entire point of this comment thread is that buying an index in the 20s is a strategy highly dependent on the index one chooses, with certain indices suffering for decades. I never said that one would be down overall, merely that anyone holding over such a long timeframe may need to wait decades to recover from certain losses (so in fact the opposite of losing money). The whole point of index investing is buying and holding, so anyone in the Nikkei for the long time had to hold through the bubble in the 80s.