“Golden Era” for investors ends as millennials expect much lower returns:  Millennials (the ones who don’t become bn’aires from their AI-fueled custom-falafel delivery startups, at least) may have to work seven years longer — or save twice as much — as the previous generation in order to get the same returns from their investment in European and American stocks and bonds, according to a May report by consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. For the past 30 years, investors have benefitted from “exceptional” inflation-adjusted returns (more than the 100-year average). But the next 20 years are set to generate much lower returns, and “that’s going to have some quite extreme consequences for all types of investors,” McKinsey director Richard Dobbs said. “The big decline in interest rates and inflation is reaching its limits, global GDP growth will be lower as populations in the developed world and China age, and the outlook for corporate profits is cloudier,” the report states, adding that emerging markets are the West’s biggest threat. The study sets two scenarios: the slow growth and recovery scenario. The first sees the U.S. GDP growing by 1.9% per year on average, while growth in other major economies is 2.1%, with returns falling below the 30-year average. The second path sees the U.S. continuing its 2.9% average of the last 30 years while non-U.S. rises 3.4%, with returns still below that “golden era” period. Bloomberg Gadfly columnist Nir Kaissar, however, reckons the future isn’t so bleak for millennials if they choose to invest instead in those emerging markets, considering that they might not be as risky as the U.S. was in the 1980s, “with stagflation and crumbling cities and sky-high interest rates and stocks in the toilet.”