swaps

Gone Nowhere in 8 Years

Really interesting data. The secret is not to have a basket of stocks, but invest in just a few stocks that will surge ever higher.
Pick a Hewlett Packard but not a General Motors. But that means you have to diversify after all....to avoid wipe out.
I agree with the observation by Naidle, Juliet and others that the impact from dividends was omitted, but then so was the impact of Federal Reserve inflation, which offsets that (as Jerrydd and others noted).
So a person who wisely invested in a broad basket of DOW stocks overall stayed even, except for losing ground in terms of real inflation.
But the billions paid to stock market order takers and price fixers is where the real action is. They buy the yachts.
Maybe the DOW price performance should be compared with the annual bonus pools paid in this same time frame to investment bankers who "service" the investors..
One could infer in the case of DOW stocks that the investment bankers have added no value over all. But the money they extract from shareholders through the relentless price fluctuations is just a form of what conservatives and libertarians call redistribution of wealth.
If Investment bankers redistribute the wealth to themselves, it is good and un-American to attack it.
This chart also points out that investing is totally obsolete. Just trade trade trade.