text:  economic theory says there's no free lunches. Simply holding stocks for a longer period of time is not going to guarantee you necessarily a higher return than if you'd invest in bonds. And in fact, since the late 1980s, it's been a pretty close force race over 20-year time horizons. And there have been plenty of 10-year time horizons, especially if you started anywhere between early 1999 through the end of 2000, where over the course of 10 years, you ended up with less money if you invested in the S&P 500 than if you invested in bonds. That's always a possibility.