Goldman Sachs cautions that predicting the next decade of returns is hard 😵‍💫

The strategists forecast lackluster returns, but they definitely don't guarantee it 🤔

Goldman Sachs’ U.S. equity strategy team is making waves after publishing a research report forecasting a decade of lackluster returns for the stock market.

Here are the first two sentences of the note that was published late Friday:

We estimate the S&P 500 will deliver an annualized nominal total return of 3% during the next 10 years (7th percentile since 1930) and roughly 1% on a real basis. Annualized nominal returns between -1% and +7% represents a range of likely outcomes around our baseline forecast and reflects the uncertainty inherent in forecasting the future…

Okay, I’m gonna stop there.

That first sentence makes for jarring headlines and unsettling sound bites.

But that second sentence is far more telling.