A little over 10 years ago, I started working at AAII. The first issue of the AAII Journal I oversaw as editor was in January 2010. For those of you who are curious, this issue is the 121st I’m overseeing.

There have been many changes over the last decade. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen from 10,428.05 to 28,235.89 as of press time. This equates to an annualized return of 10.5%. The S&P 500 index has realized an 11.2% annualized return over the same period. Yields on the 10-year Treasury note have fallen from 3.84% to 1.89%.

It has also gotten cheaper to invest. In January 2010, Charles Schwab announced their plans to lower commissions on stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to $8.95 per trade. Now commissions are $0 at most of the online discount brokers. Both mutual funds and ETFs have lowered their expense ratios. It’s now possible to own a fully diversified portfolio at an annual cost of less than $1 for every $1,000 invested (taxes excluded, of course).

It’s been a good 10-year stretch to be a long-term investor who has stuck with their portfolio. This is purely coincidental to my tenure as AAII Journal editor, but I’ll gladly take it anyway.

Investors, of course, commonly look forward. How an investment is expected to perform in the future is more important than how it has performed in the past. History, however, provides a very good guide. Those who study history can gain a good sense of what types of market events are normal and what are unusual. (The 2008 financial crisis was unusual for the post-Great Depression era.)

History can also help you understand what to expect in the future. For example, anticipating the Dow to reach at least 50,000 by the end of the next decade may seem bold, but it’s not. For the blue-chip average to exceed this level by the end of 2029, it would only have to realize a middling annualized return of 6% during this new decade.

If you view 50,000 as a big number, it is because you’re anchoring your viewpoint based on where the Dow is trading now or has previously traded at. The anchoring bias is one of the common behavioral errors Jason Voss discusses here.

Regardless of what the market does, we at AAII will continue to try and help you reach your long-term financial goals. We spent a good deal of time last year developing new features and enhancing existing features for AAII.com. In doing so, we used our own vantage point of being long-term individual investors. Simply put, we sought to make AAII.com an even better tool for individual investors, such as yourself. Depending on when you read this, these enhancements may either be close to being unveiled or already launched. And we’ve got a backlog of more enhancements to get to. I hope you take advantage of them.

We took mobile devices into account in our designs. When I first started at AAII, the iPhone was limited to one U.S. carrier and the first Samsung Galaxy had yet to be released. Now, mobile devices—smartphones, tablets and watches—are ubiquitous.

Given this change, we looked at the discount brokerage apps as part of our updated guide to discount brokers. We didn’t just limit ourselves to the major firms—Charles Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, etc.—either. We also looked at the emergent brokerage firms Acorns, Robinhood, Stash and Stockpile. Some of you may not be familiar with them, but there’s a good chance you know a millennial who is. We found the newer firms to be limited in their offerings but a potential option for someone just starting out. The ability to buy partial shares of a stock with a high share price like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) or Apple Inc. (AAPL) could be enticing for someone with limited amounts to invest. You can learn more by going here.

We gave the pending merger of Schwab and TD Ameritrade only a brief mention. Antitrust concerns have been raised by investment advisers who use TD Ameritrade’s platforms, so it’s unclear if the merger will go through or if concessions will need to be made. I’m watching what happens from both a personal and professional standpoint, as I have accounts with TD Ameritrade and at AAII we use both brokers for our model portfolios.

The merger will be one of the many headlines you will see this year. As you progress through 2020 and the new decade (the 2020s?) realize that big rewards come from staying focused on your long-term goals and not being distracted by short-term events.

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year,