Wharton Professor and author Jeremy Siegel says Bill Gross’ claim that the cult of equities is “dead” and that the 6% to 7% annualized real returns for stocks over the past century were an anomaly are way off-base. Siegel says that  his analysis found that U.S. market returns were in the same range not only over the past century, but also in the century before that. And, he says, other researchers have found a myriad of other equity markets have produced similar 6% to 7% real return averages in the past century, showing the U.S. was not an anomaly. Siegel also discusses what he says is a key mistake in Gross’ analysis, and says Gross’ words are actually encouraging — throughout history, when the media has pronounced the stock market “dead”, big bull runs have usually followed.