What is good growth?
If your question is truly just  What is good growth? Is there a target return that's accepted as good?   I assumed 8% (plus transaction fees). Then I'd have to point out that the S&P has offered a CAGR of 9.77% since 1900. You can buy an S&P ETF for .05%/yr expense. If your goal is to lag the S&P by 1.7%/yr over the long term, you can use a 85/15 mix of S&P and cash, sleep well at night, and avoid wasting any time picking stocks. In One Up on Wall Street, Peter Lynch suggested that there are six major aspects to choosing growth stocks: The first issue is if the stock has returned 8% since you purchased it that could be either very good (8% in two days) or very bad (8% over 20 years).  Even just measured over the past year it could be relatively very good (up 8% and the market is down 5%) or very bad (up 8% and the market is up 16%). Either way, the good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't choose your positions using the returns of the stock in the past, but only on your view of the future returns of the stock.  For instance, if the stock has gone up 8% in two months, but you think it has another 8% to go in the next two months you probably shouldn't take your earnings. As for the $5k, at first glance that is not an unreasonable amount.  If you use a discount broker the fees shouldn't be so large that you will eat up any return on a $5k amount.  Also, from what you describe it is not such a large amount that mistakes will put your retirement in danger. There isn't a single hard and fast return to expect. Securities, like all things in a free market, compete for your money. As the Fed sets the tone for the market with their overnight Fed funds rate, you might want to use a multiple of the 'benchmark' 10-year T-note yeald. So let's suppose that a good multiple is four. The current yeald on the 10-year T-note is hovering around two. That would give a target yeald of eight.  http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24UST10Y&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p47115669808
"It's likely impossible to determine why premiums are increasing in a meaningful way; not only is the interrelationship between the various data points very complex, but some of the increases are likely due to decisions by people who do not and will not publicly post what they decided and why. However, it is possible to compare health insurance premium increases over time to see if the increases in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are comparable or not to the pre-ACA timeframe. Since the ACA phased in over a few years, we can compare the period 2008-2010 ""pre-ACA"" and 2013-2015 ""post-ACA"", ignoring 2011-2012 as being unclearly affected by the ACA phase-in.  For this, I will look at single coverage premiums only for the purpose of simplifying the analysis. I found a good table of 2008-2010 premiums from the NCSL; they list the following: Kaiser Permanente had a good list for 2013-2015 here: From 2008-2010, the average growth was around 6% per year.  From 2013-2015, the growth averaged about 3%.  In both of these cases we are comparing total premiums (sum of employer and employee contributions). So, from a data-driven look, it seems that the premium growth is lower post-ACA than pre-ACA, so it's unlikely that the ACA could be accused of causing increased premium growth.  Of course, this is US-wide average, and on a state-by-state basis there may well be significant differences that may or may not be related to the ACA. One thing that is covered on the NCSL page linked above that is interesting: while the premium growth has slowed significantly (about 50% of the growth pre-ACA), health insurance premiums are a higher proportion of employee's wages, and that growth is continuing - because wage growth has not kept pace with inflation post-2008 recession.  Employee contributions also may be higher post-recession; many companies reduced their contribution percentage (as my then employer did, for example).   Finally, increases in the ACA plans are also commonly overstated.  They largely are in line with employer plans or even less.   In 2015, premiums were basically flat, decreasing slightly in fact - see the KFF analysis here.  2016 saw a 3.6% by this methodology (see the 2016 analysis).   It's very easy to cherrypick examples that are favorable to any interpretation from the data, though; there are such big swings as a result of the different conditions in the marketplaces that it's easy to pick a few that have high swings and claim the ACA has massive premium increases, or pick a few that have low swings and claim it's reducing costs." You could use  the Gordon growth model implied expected return: P = D/(r-g) --&gt; r = D/P (forward dividend yield) + g (expected dividend growth). But obviously there is no such thing as a good market return proxy. "China's regulators, it seems, are on the attack. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, announced recently that he'd resign if he wasn't able to discipline the banking system. Under his leadership, the CBRC is stepping up scrutiny of the role of trust companies and other financial institutions in helping China's banks circumvent lending restrictions.  The People's Bank of China has also been on the offensive. It has recently raised the cost of liquidity, attacked riskier funding structures among smaller banks, and discontinued a program that effectively monetized one-fifth of last year's increase in lending.  Are the regulators finally getting serious about reining in credit creation? The answer is an easy one: Yes if they're willing to allow economic growth to slow substantially, probably to 3 percent or less, and no if they aren't.    inRead invented by Teads  This is because there's a big difference between China's sustainable growth rate, based on rising demand driven by household consumption and productive investment, and its actual GDP growth rate, which is boosted by massive lending to fund investment projects that are driven by the need to generate economic activity and employment.  Economists find it very difficult to formally acknowledge the difference between the two rates, and many don't even seem to recognize that it exists. Yet this only shows how confused economists are about gross domestic product more generally. The confusion arises because a country's GDP is not a measure of the value of goods and services it creates but rather a measure of economic activity. In a market economy, investment must create enough additional productive capacity to justify the expenditure. If it doesn't, it must be written down to its true economic value. This is why GDP is a reasonable proxy in a market economy for the value of goods and services produced.  But in a command economy, investment can be driven by factors other than the need to increase productivity, such as boosting employment or local tax revenue. What's more, loss-making investments can be carried for decades before they're amortized, and insolvency can be ignored. This means that GDP growth can overstate value creation for decades.  That's what has happened in China. In the first quarter of 2017, China added debt equal to more than 40 percentage points of GDP -- an amount that has been growing year after year. In 2011, the World Economic Forum predicted that China's debt would increase by a worrying $20 trillion by 2020. By 2016, it had already increased by $22 trillion, according to the most conservative estimates, and at current rates it will increase by as much as $50 trillion by 2020. These numbers probably understate the reality.  If all this debt hasn't boosted China's GDP growth to substantially more than its potential growth rate, then what was the point? And why has it proven so difficult for the government to rein it in? It has promised to do so since 2012, yet credit growth has only accelerated, reaching some of the highest levels ever seen for a developing country.  The answer is that credit creation had to accelerate to boost GDP growth above the growth rate of productive capacity. Much, if not most, of China's 6.5 percent GDP growth is simply an artificial boost in economic activity with no commensurate increase in the capacity to create goods and services. It must be fully reversed once credit stops growing. To make matters worse, if high debt levels generate financial distress costs for the economy -- as already seems to be happening -- the amount that must be reversed will substantially exceed the original boost.  Once credit is under control, China will have lower but healthier GDP growth rates. If the economy rebalances, most Chinese might not even notice: It would require that household income -- which has grown much more slowly than GDP for nearly three decades -- now grow faster, so that the sharp slowdown in economic growth won't be matched by an equivalent slowdown in wage growth.  Clear thinking from leading voices in business, economics, politics, foreign affairs, culture, and more. Share the View  Enter your email  Sign Up But to manage this rebalancing requires substantial transfers of wealth from local governments to ordinary households to boost consumption. This is why China hasn't been able to control credit growth in the past. The central government has had to fight off provincial ""vested interests,"" who oppose any substantial transfer of wealth. Without these transfers, slower GDP growth would mean higher unemployment.  Whether regulators can succeed in reining in credit creation this time is ultimately a political question, and depends on the central government's ability to force through necessary reforms. Until then, as long as China has the debt capacity, GDP growth rates will remain high. But to see that as healthy is to miss the point completely." "GDP being a measurement for an economy's growth and with the stock market being driven (mostly) by company profits you would expect a tight correlation between GDP growth and stock market performance. After all, a growing economy should lead to a corresponding increase in profit right? But the stock market is heavily influenced by investor mentality; irrational exuberant buying and panic selling make the stock market far more volatile than GDP ever can be. Just look at the 2001 bubble and 2008 panic sell-off for famous examples. I feel emerging markets are particularly prone to overly optimistic buying to ""get in"" on the GDP growth followed by overly pessimistic selling when politics get unfavorable. Also keep in mind that GDP measurements are all done after the fact, the growth that is reported has already happened. The stock market might have already expected the reported growth and priced it in. A final point: governments and companies in emerging markets have a reputation (sometimes deserved) of poor governance, think corruption, nepotism etc. So even if the economy grows substantially investors might not believe they can profit from the growth.  P.S. What do you base the ""no great increase"" on? Emerging markets have had a rough decade but that index would have still returned 9% annually if you held it since 2001." "You don't seem to understand wealth. It's not money, really.  Wealth is more good stuff to people. It really doesn't matter how it's distributed for it to be wealth.  If you just give poor people money, you might actually improve things, like lobotomia might improve brains. Mix it, and it might settle in better order.  The economy ""grows"" because people get more good stuff done than they consume. If you pay people for doing nothing in massive scale, you're just making them consume, but not to make any good stuff. They probably spend the money on something that will make more good stuff to people, that's true. And that's the reason why you might get a way with one time lobotomia, but it's terrible if you are competing with countries who don't do missteps, and every expense they do increases the economy in itself + the effect above.  How you should give money away? As an investment to a company that is making a new conquer. Jobs, goods and more competition, all good." A lot of the greatest innovators in America started out with little or no capital. Thomas Edison once sold newspapers and fruit on a train. Jack Welch was the son of a train conductor who worked his way up the ranks of GE. Steve Jobs was put up for adoption as an infant and was at one point homeless.   The idea that the 1% create all of the growth in the economy is a lie. Innovation and thus economic growth can come from any part of American society because it is part of our culture. The question is therefore not an economic one but a moral one. Do we, the citizens of the richest nation in the world, want to watch our fellow countrymen go hungry, homeless or die because they don't have living salaries or access to proper healthcare? GDP growth is one of several components of nominal equity returns; the (probably not comprehensive) list includes:  Real GDP/earnings growth  Inflation  Dividend payouts and share buybacks  Multiple expansion (the market willing to pay more per dollar of earnings)  Changes in interest rate expectations  As other comments mention you could also see larger companies tending to deliver higher returns as for any number of reasons related to M&amp;A, expansion into foreign markets, etc. "I agree that real income growth has been flat twenty years, but you're wrong about Americans owning stocks.  Anyone who has a pension is directly involved in ""gambling"" on the stock market.    Check out /r/personalfinance -- there are lots of people who invest/save money, but don't earn a lot.   There are options that are as cheap as $25/pay...It gives you a way to invest when you are young.  I have paid into a mutual fund/etfs since 21...wish I had done it sooner!"