Given such a strong run, and considering that we have not experienced a correction (a price decline in excess of 10%) in more than a year, many investors may be getting a bit wary. After all, the average annualized return for U.S. large cap stocks over the past twenty years is only 7.5%. But in our opinion, a strategy of relying on these types of mathematical averages is a little fuzzy, as markets seldom act average. In fact, calendar year stock returns are usually anything but average.