Remember 2020/21, when Covid-19 crashed stock markets? At their 2020 lows, the UK FTSE 100 and US S&P 500 indexes had collapsed by 35%. Nevertheless, 2020/21 was a great time to buy shares, because returns have been outstanding since.

But would I done better five years ago buying the S&P 500 or investing in gold, one of the world’s oldest stores of value?

Over the past five years, the S&P 500 has leapt by 70.4%. However, this capital gain excludes cash dividends — regular cash returns paid by some companies to shareholders.

Adding dividends, the S&P 500’s return jumps to 81.8%, turning $10,000 into $10,818. That works out at a compound yearly growth rate of 12.7%.

Then again, as a British investor, I buy US assets using pounds sterling. The US index’s return in GBP terms over five years is 13.6% a year. This equates to a five-year total return of 89.2% — still a handsome result for UK buyers of US shares.

For many, gold is the ideal asset in times of trouble. First, it has several uses: as a store of value (often in bank vaults), for jewellery, and as an excellent conductor of electricity in electronics. Second, it is scarce: all the gold ever mined would fit into a cube with sides of under 23m.

As I write, the gold price stands at £3,484.50. This is up an impressive 178.5% over the past five years. That works out at a compound yearly growth rate of 22.7% a year — thrashing the S&P 500’s returns.

Of course, gold pays no income, but these bumper returns can more than make up for this omission. Then again, with the S&P 500 worth around $60trn, its gains have been enjoyed by a much larger cohort of investors

Thus, over the past five years, investors have made more money owning gold than investing in the S&P 500. And speaking of high-performing investments, here’s another hidden gem from spring 2021…

As an older investor (I turned 58 this month), my family portfolio is packed with boring, old-school FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 shares that pay generous dividends.

For example, my family owns shares in Lloyds Banking Group (LSE: LLOY), whose stock has soared since 2021. As I write, Lloyds shares trade at 96.68p, valuing the Black Horse bank at £56.7bn.

Over one year, the shares are up 37.8%, easily beating major market indexes. Over five years, this stock has soared by 135.6% — comfortably beating most UK and US shares over this timescale.

Again, the above returns exclude dividends, which Lloyds stock pays out generously. Right now, its dividend yield is 3.8% a year, beating the wider FTSE 100’s yearly cash yield of 3.1%.

Earlier this year, Lloyds shares were riding high, peaking at 114.6p on 4 February. They have since fallen by 15.6%, driven down by the US-Iran war, soaring energy prices, and fears of an economic slowdown. Of course, if the UK endures another recession, banking revenues, profits, and cash flow could take a nasty hit.

That said, sticky, above-target inflation hinders the Bank of England from cutting interest rates. This boosts Lloyds’ net interest margin, boosting its 2026 earnings. And that’s why we will keep holding tightly onto our Lloyds shares!

The post Should investors have bought gold or the S&P 500 5 years ago? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

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The Motley Fool UK has recommended Lloyds Banking Group. Cliff D’Arcy has an economic interest in Lloyds Banking Group shares. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services, such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool, we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Motley Fool UK 2026

In my work helping people think through retirement planning decisions, I often see people focus heavily on preparing their tax return but spend very little time reviewing it afterward.

By the time tax season ends, most people treat the document like a receipt: They file it, save a copy somewhere and move on.

The push mirrors Adobe’s broader strategy around agentic AI. For customers, the company lets them choose models, combine them with their own data and Adobe’s, and point agents at specific business outcomes.

Internally, Durn, who is also in charge of technology, security and operations, has taken a similar approach to finance: pairing a rules-based, data-heavy function with AI, within a structure where finance, IT, and security report to one leader so pilots can move to production quickly. “Accuracy is non-negotiable,” he adds; that’s why Adobe is investing in structured data and governance so it can move fast without sacrificing precision, he says. 

The rise of AI is rapidly reshaping corporate leadership, accelerating turnover and elevating executives who can deliver fast, tangible results. Even long-tenured leaders face increasing pressure from investors to move aggressively on AI. Recent leadership changes, including the announced retirement of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, highlight how little patience markets now have for perceived hesitation. At the same time, Adobe reported that annualized revenue from its AI-first products more than tripled year over year in its first quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended Feb. 27. Across Fortune 500 companies, this dynamic is creating a new internal proving ground where executives are judged by how effectively, and how quickly, they deploy AI to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation.

Using AI in finance

Inside finance, Durn groups AI use into three buckets: forecasting, anomaly detection, and general productivity.

For forecasting, AI uncovers patterns and signals in data that would be difficult for humans to detect quickly, he explains. Anomaly-detection agents flag performance that’s unexpectedly strong or weak—“things that can get lost in the sea of data”—so finance can intervene faster, he says.

However, Durn says the best examples now sit in productivity, citing three use cases:

1. Extracting information from PDFs

One of the most developed use cases involves “containers” of information—collections of PDFs such as investor transcripts, quarterly reports, and analyst research. Finance teams use Adobe’s PDF Spaces to load documents into a shared digital workspace and use an agentic AI assistant to surface themes, insights, and messaging cues in minutes rather than hours.

A recent Forrester TEI study found Acrobat’s agentic AI Assistant increases efficiencies in document summarization and analysis by 45%. Durn says that matters because “the world’s information lives in PDF,” and AI that turns static content into insights that can be used.

2. Cutting contract review time in half

Adobe is also using agentic AI to overhaul contract reviews across finance and procurement functions including revenue assurance, contract operations, product fulfillment, and vendor management. Instead of finance professionals combing through every clause, an AI assistant scans thousands of contracts, highlights provisions relevant to each function, and flags non-standard terms.

The system has cut review time roughly in half, speeding individual reviews and allowing teams to query the entire contract repository—for example, identifying which contracts include auto-cancellation features or foreign-exchange adjustment windows, Durn says. Adobe built its first prototype by April 2024 and began onboarding teams in January 2025.

3. Automating “common” inboxes

A third area is the “common inboxes” that handle high-volume internal and external email—shared addresses for sales, treasury, finance, and supplier questions. Adobe deployed an agentic AI assistant that auto-tags, prioritizes, routes, and, when criteria are met, auto-responds to emails. Typical queries include supplier billing issues or standard credit-quality questions coming into the treasury from Salesforce.

“In 2025 alone, the system auto-responded to about 300,000 emails across 19 inboxes, saving more than 5,000 hours of manual work and freeing teams to focus on more complex issues,” he says. The tool took about six months to build; beta teams began using it around August 2024, with full rollout in January 2025.

The payoff, he stresses, isn’t headcount cuts but the ability to scale more efficiently as Adobe grows.

Grassroots ideas, decade-long build

Durn traces these finance use cases to Adobe’s long AI journey and a bottom-up idea pipeline. The company has invested in machine learning and AI for more than a decade, initially to understand customer usage patterns and embed intelligence into products—work that laid the groundwork for generative and agentic AI.

Many of the best applications come from “reaching down into the organization” and asking employees where AI could remove friction or make their jobs easier, he says. There are more ideas than capacity, so the team prioritizes those with the greatest impact.

When deciding whether to green-light AI investments, Durn focuses on organizational velocity—the ability of back-office functions to keep pace with faster product innovation. If finance doesn’t adopt AI, he argues, it risks becoming a “rate limiter of growth.”

The actual spend is modest, he adds; much of the work involves change management and process redesign layered onto Adobe’s technology.

Durn’s perspective on change management coincides with new research from McKinsey. To capture the full value of AI, organizations need to go beyond “a piecemeal approach and push for a double transformation—both technical and organizational—that includes reimagining how work gets done across functions and workflows,” according to the report. While 88% of organizations surveyed are now experimenting with AI, fewer than 20% report tangible bottom-line results,, the research finds.

How AI is changing his own job

For his own workflow, Durn relies on AI primarily for insight generation. Ahead of earnings, his team loads pre-earnings research reports, Adobe filings, and peer transcripts into an AI-powered workspace to surface themes and likely investor questions.

Scripts and Q&A preparation are then run through models with guardrails to test whether messaging addresses those themes and to ask, “If I were an investor, what are my key takeaways?”

He sees it as a useful check on clarity and consistency—using AI to validate instincts and sharpen how Adobe communicates with the market.