You are cherry picking your stock market starting point of 1982. That was a post-recession low caused by the necessary raising of interest rates by the Fed to wring out the inflation of the horrible Carter years. That and the lower tax rates of Reagan caused the stock market to rise starting in 1982.
It is quite disingenuous for you to use that as a starting point.
It’s not my starting point, but Forbes’. Nonetheless, you have to compare apples to apples. Trump started with about $100 million in 1968. That’s about $671 million in today’s dollars.
During the 20th century the stock market returned an average of 10.4% a year. We’ve accounted for inflation above, so investing $671 million over 45 years at 10.4%/year gets you to $57 billion.
That’s an imperfect calculation because stocks went up and down over that period, but RE can be sold tax free and most of the rents can be offset by depreciation. So it’s not so bad.
Trump isn’t worth $57 billion. He’s worth $3 billion. So he grew at a rate of only 1/3 of what he would have done against the financial yardstick of stock appreciation.
He’s not a good businessman.