By Mark Gongloff | WSJ | Sep. 9, 2011

If on September 11, 2001, you sold stocks and bought crude oil, silver and gold — as many people did — and then held those things for the next decade, you’d have done really, really well.

A chart posted by Bespoke Investment Group yesterday illustrates this starkly.

The best performing asset class of the past decade has been silver, up more than 900%, from $4.16 an ounce to nearly $42 at last check. Gold has been a healthy second, up nearly 568%, from about $272 an ounce to about $1854.

Crude-oil, which everybody expected to be a big winner after Sept. 11, has gained, though not as much as gold and silver, rising 225%, from less than $28 a barrel to about $86.

The biggest post-9/11 losers have been the US dollar, European stock markets and financial stocks in the S&P 500. The best-performing sector in the S&P over this time has been the energy sector, up 128%.