This does not negate the original post, but $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 on Jan 22, 2009 would be $20,038.80 today. (According to morningstar.com; note that this is “total return” with dividends reinvested. They get both this and mutual funds (where distributions are reinvested) correct. Google Finance does not do this.)
With a market this volatile and divorced from reality you can pick a timeframe to make any point whatsoever. No human or algorithm can reliably call these things.
To be fair to STL, though, he made the natural choice of timeframe for this case, starting with when the original post was published and ending at the latest possible date.
There’s a hypothesis out there that, on average, people have “worse than average” market timing. After all, mass stock sell-offs are highly correlated with abnormally low stock prices, and mass stock purchases are highly correlated with abnormally high stock prices...
It would be $12,167.87, approximately a 3.3% annual percentage yield in nominal terms, or more approximately a 1.2% APY in real terms. Not awesome, but not throwing money in the furnace.
This does not negate the original post, but $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 on Jan 22, 2009 would be $20,038.80 today. (According to morningstar.com; note that this is “total return” with dividends reinvested. They get both this and mutual funds (where distributions are reinvested) correct. Google Finance does not do this.)
With a market this volatile and divorced from reality you can pick a timeframe to make any point whatsoever. No human or algorithm can reliably call these things.
To be fair to STL, though, he made the natural choice of timeframe for this case, starting with when the original post was published and ending at the latest possible date.
There’s a hypothesis out there that, on average, people have “worse than average” market timing. After all, mass stock sell-offs are highly correlated with abnormally low stock prices, and mass stock purchases are highly correlated with abnormally high stock prices...
And what would $10,000 invested on Jan 22, 2007 be today?
It would be $12,167.87, approximately a 3.3% annual percentage yield in nominal terms, or more approximately a 1.2% APY in real terms. Not awesome, but not throwing money in the furnace.