Q: I continually hear of the “great” stock market of the ’90s. But I wonder how much of that was the bubble at the end of the decade. If that rise had not occurred, would the results have been lackluster?

A: That’s a terrific question. For many of today’s investors, the ’90s are the benchmark: a period that proved stocks are the best investments for the long term. But if the bubble distorted the results, maybe that decade didn’t support the stocks-are-best theory after all.

So what do the numbers show?

We’ll look at the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the market gauge most commonly used by the pros. It’s made up of stocks of the 500 largest companies.

For the full decade of the ’90s, including the bubble at the end, the S&P 500 earned investors a terrific 17.9 percent a year.

Now let’s eliminate the two-year bubble.

It was largely the result of soaring prices in Internet and other technology stocks, which dominated the Nasdaq Composite index. It really took off in 1998 and soared until the bubble burst in 2000.

So if we remove this period, how did the broad market, measured by the S&P 500, do in the first eight years of the decade?

It returned an annual average of 16.4 percent. That’s awfully good. The ’90s was, indeed, a fine decade for stocks.

Although the bubble and subsequent crash stick in our minds, they didn’t actually do much damage to long-term investors.

During the past 10 years – a period spanning the bubble and crash – the S&P 500 has returned an annual average just shy of 10 percent.

That’s consistent with the long-term averages seen in the 20th century – and it’s the reason stocks are viewed as good long-term investments.