Besides the ups and downs of the stock market, 401(k) plans and managed brokerage accounts (e.g., with RIAs, Morgan Stanley, or Charles Schwab) typically underperform the major market indexes like the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so real world performance is typically worse than the chart you just saw.

• https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2024.pdf (Page 10)

• https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/dam/corp/research/pdf/how_america_saves_report_2025.pdf (Page 86)

• https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt4eb669caa7dc65b2/blt0571178b63219c0b/66bdeb4a4f0e4749e15a5621/2024_Mind_the_Gap.pdf (Pages 2, 16)

• https://citywire.com/ria/news/schwab-study-median-ria-underperformed-the-s-and-p-500-by-4-in-2023/a2446612

• https://www.investmentexecutive.com/news/research-and-markets/most-brokerage-stock-picks-underperform-sp-500-study/