I’m a sporting type, and I would love to make a large bet with the chief financial officer of any one of those four companies, or with their actuaries or auditors, that over the next 15 years they will not average the rates they’ve postulated. Just look at the math, for one thing. A fund’s portfolio is very likely to be one-third bonds, on which—assuming a conservative mix of issues with an appropriate range of maturities—the fund cannot today expect to earn much more than 5%. It’s simple to see then that the fund will need to average more than 11% on the two-thirds that’s in stocks to earn
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