Equity returns were pretty lousy during the height of the industrial revolution in the 19th century. Stock prices only loosely correlate to general growth. The 1950s were boom years with lousy returns, and stocks shut up during periods in the 80s and 90s when the economy wasn't fantastic by historical comparison.
Stocks just haven't been all that great a way to make money, historically.
I don't know about globally, but it looks like prices tripled during the 1950's in the US. And that's not counting dividends, which were a bit higher at the time. Or did you mean something else?
In fact, I seem to remember a William O'Neill book claiming that the 50's were more speculative than the 60's. He argued that if you just treat prices as earnings and some multiple, you can demonstrate that returns in the 1950's were mostly multiple expansion, and in the 60's they were mostly earnings growth.
