Best FTSE 100 shares over 10 years revealed

“It is only three years ago that the investment industry was wringing its hands over a ‘lost decade’ for stock markets. Ten years on from the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000, it was hard to make the case for investing in equities. Today it looks very different, with the FTSE All Share index having nearly doubled since the market low of March 12 2003. For investors who sensibly reinvested the income from their shares, the returns over that period were even more spectacular. The total return of the All Share index has been 193% since March 2003, nearly trebling the initial investment. The best performing shares and funds have done considerably better even than this.

“The key lesson I take from the performance of stock markets over the past ten years is that when sentiment is most depressed the potential rewards are usually greatest. When the market bottomed in March 2003, the British invasion of Iraq was imminent, the TMT boom had ended badly and almost everyone was pessimistic about the outlook for investing. The reality was that this was a great time to invest. Timing market turns like this is impossible and requires a stronger contrarian streak than most of us possess. The answer is to invest regularly through the cycle and to maximise your total return by ensuring that you reinvest dividend income.” 

Best performing FTSE 100 shares of the past 10 years