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The S&P 500 Hasn’t Fared Well During the New Millenium

By JLP | May 7, 2009

The New Millenium hasn’t been good for the S&P 500 Index. Take a look at the graphic below to see what I mean:

S&P 500 Index During the New Millenium

• Through April, there were 112 months during the New Millenium.
• Of those 112 months, 63 had positive total returns, while 49 of them were negative.
• The best monthly total return occured in March of 2000 when the index returned 9.78%.
• The worst monthly total return was last October’s -16.8%.
• The average monthly total return for the S&P 500 Index during the New Millenium has been -.21%.

It will be interesting to see how 2009 closes out the first decade of the New Millenium. So far it’s not looking too good.

Topics: Index Funds, Investing | 6 Comments »


6 Responses to “The S&P 500 Hasn’t Fared Well During the New Millenium”

  1. mbhunter Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 2:03 am

    And that’s without taking inflation into account. That doubles the negative return:

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

  2. Mark Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 5:05 am

    Should we beleive in reversion to the mean and expect the next 112 months to be better?

  3. Chris Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    Nice layout.. Just curious, do these numbers include dividends?

    Thanks!

  4. JLP Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Chris,

    Yes, they are total returns.

    Mark,

    I’ll look at my data and calculate the mean going back to 1926. That should be an interesting finding.

  5. Steve Braun Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 11:29 am

    The S&P 500 is an all-U.S., large-cap index.

    This data reinforces why diversification of equities is so key — small-cap, mid-cap, and international. Mix all of that in with other asset classes such as cash, bonds, real estate, precious metals, etc. and things don’t look so bad anymore.

    JLP — It would an interesting follow up to see side-by-side comparisons for the same time period showing the S&P 500 and other equity indexes along with other asset classes.

  6. Ray Says:
    May 9th, 2009 at 10:04 pm

    I think if the inflation bug kicks in by the second half of the year you may see the S&P back over 1000 in nominal terms. Of course the dollar will likely resume its relentless march into the cellar also.

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