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S&P 500 Price has returned -1.5%/annum on price alone since 1999, while S&P 500 dividend return has been 4.9%/annum over the same period.

Longer term, since 1971, S&P 500 Price has returned 6.3%/an, while dividend has returned 5.6%/an.

So, yes, if you are a lucky soul who was 21 years old in 1971, bought the market, and held it to today, you would be slightly better off than you would be with dividend.

But what if you were a 45 year old in 1999 who started their retirement savings and are nearing retirement with over a decade of negative returns?

Time horizon and suitability of your choice are often more important than what you actually pick.

Having other people manage your finances may be problematic if the fiduciary responsibility has been misplaced as you have pointed out.

When you go to a lawyer or an accountant, you do not question their advice, largely because they have been positioned as a services experts rather than sales folk.

Properly diversified portfolio will carry you through the ups and downs in the market, because it hedges your risk against those fluctuations. And for that kind of portfolio, you need a bona fide, unbiased expert's advice. The kind of advice that is currently NOT available to mid-networth market, and the kind of advice that the rich are paying a premium to obtain.

The article pointed out that the financial services is broken and investing in broad index is a band-aid solution, but wouldn't it be more appropriate for us to have a solution that solves the problem rather than the one that patches it?


What? Index funds don't steal the dividends from you, they contribute to the performance or are paid out.

Generally look at the performance index to evaluate returns, NEVER NEVER the price index, please.

The total return of the S&P 500 from January 1999 until now is 47.7%, or 2.91% per annum (EDIT: had incorrect numbers!). Not a good return, but you also picked one of the worst dates.

Please also note that the price and dividend returns ADD UP. You don't need to choose between one or the other.


You are completely correct. You should always look at the performance. In fact, you should be focused on your own performance.

I was merely displaying the parts of that performance and illustrating that one part of it is far more volatile and the other is less so. Knowing that fact alone, if you had invested in divindend paying securities and focused on the cash flow of the economy, you would have been personally better off.

Not all stocks pay dividends. Not paying attention to that can bring you closer to the -1.5%/an and farther from 4.9%.

>>Not a good return, but you also picked one of the worst dates.

I have picked the current situation. We can talk about historical rosy times in the market, but that is somewhat beside the point. This is our current reality.


With worst date i mean 1999. Well I guess 2000 would have been worse. It's a question of luck which date is good.

And no, picking the stocks with more dividend yield is NOT a strategy that is guaranteed to work, because these are usually low-growth companies. Now the market assessment of growth is unlikely to be right for all companies, but it's likely to be better than that of most people.


> S&P 500 Price has returned -1.5%/annum on price alone since 1999

This is a selective endpoint, creating bias in the result. 1999 was an outlier peak, so of course measuring from 1999 will show minimal returns. Measure from 1988 or 1995 or 2003 or any of the vast majority of possible years, and you'll see significantly positive return for stocks.


I'd just like to note, that anyone who starts saving for retirement at 45 isn't likely to have a great outcome. If they started in 1999, yes they got a rough deal, but that's what happens when you start 25 years too late. Index fund or great advisor isn't the problem here.


Not always. If you were 45 and entered the market in 2008, you'd be in a great shape now, probably better than a 20 year old who entered the market in 1999.


This is only possibly true if the 20 year old made his sole contribution in 1999. The more reasonable case is the 20 year old made his first contribution in 1999, and now has 13 years of contributions plus gains.

It's highly unlikely that 3 years of gains from 2008-present would outstrip 13 years of contributions + gains + reinvested dividends.


The S&P 500 is not "the market". It's certainly a better representative of the U.S. market than the Dow Jones Industrial Index (which has just 30 stocks) but it has nowhere near as many stocks as the Wilshire 5000. Not to mention none of those give you any international exposure.


some thoughts:

isn't S&P index by definition diversified?

And the the other question is, yes the S&P had a rate of -1.5% but considering the crashes of the past decade, would you be lucky to achieve -1.5% return rather than something much, much worse?


Yes, the S&P is diversified in the stock portfolios. What I meant was diversify into things like fixed income vehicles, first mortgage securities, real estate income trusts etc.

And yes again, most investors came out much worse over the past decade that -1.5%, but even the theoretical return is dismal enough to illustrate the point.

Negative returns, while a simple concept, can be a real jaw dropper for many a DIY investors. If you invest $100.00 and lose 10%, you'll have $90. But $10 out of $90 is 11%. So you'd need to return more in the positive just to make your money back. And the greater the negative return, the greater the positive required. If you lost 20%, you'd need 25% etc.


"App Store has remained a high quality experience"

Show me a dev that thinks that App store is a high quality experience and I will show you an Apple fan boy! :-)

"Her real problem is a lack of decent web developer"

She is a WRITER. Her business process should not require a web developer and I hope that Apple does not operate on a basis that people have pocket web devs, just in case they convolute the process whereby you need native expertise to unravel.

(that comment aside, Holly does employ a web dev, and it clearly did not help her)

While pitchforks may not be necessary, the inquisition and the transparency of the process are absolutely necessary.


2 + 2 = 5; for large values of 2.



Or Haskell.

  let 2+2=5 in 2 + 2
(Significantly less mind-blowing though.)


interesting and funny though for somebody who doesn't know Haskell


Or small values of 5.


So to compensate for large values of 2, provide a small value of 5?


This is not going to add much to the conversation, but.. Urgh!


As a hiring manager, I disagree with this somewhat. Deselecting people based on the fact that they did not send you a thank you email is, imho, quite foolish.

1) It assumes that the hiring manager is holding all the power in the interview process (which is actually not true). As a hiring manager, Ms. Liebman, how many 'thank you' emails have you sent to your interviewees? You think you should not have to? Well, I disagree.

2) It's a nicety, but by no means a necessity. It's a bit old school and in this day and age, with the amount of emails people get, it's not always as welcome as you think.

It falls into the trap of A players hiring A players and not worrying about minutia like this. When B players hire C players, you may get deselected cause you did not stroke their egos.


Leadership is not necessary exclusive of administration and facilitation. Contrary to the intuitive belief, it is not synonymous with 'command and control' and therein lies the issue Joel was trying to expose. Also, being an administrator does not mean you are a secretary.

You can be a leader, a facilitator and an administrator at the same time.


> Seductively, it even works OK for a three person company.

Anyone who thinks command and control is a good idea with 2 other people has got bigger fish to fry than finer points of effective management.


This reminds me of that joke from long time ago where there was a machine that recommended potential mate. A woman requested a man of shorter stature, who likes water and cooler climate, dresses formally most of the time and loves to eat fish. The machine recommended her a penguin.

The problem is, no matter how you slice it, there's nothing more effective than a good old fashioned cup of coffee and one of the interesting parties taking a bit of a risk. It's just the way it has always been and I highly doubt that it's possible to do this with an app or a program that works perfectly. No matter what you try, someone will try and game it.


> If you asked the same question to a "newbie" on HN I'm not sure they would be so secure to admit the same because they wouldn't know how ubiquitous the company was. And they would be afraid of showing how clueless they were.

This would only hold true if they were conditioned to fear the reaction of them not knowing. If someone had never heard of Google and they admitted that, if someone simply said 'it's a commonly used search engine' without much negative connotation, they will not be afraid to admit not knowing something similar in the future.

However, if you laugh, point, call them a 'newbie' and make them leave the room with their heads hung in shame, then yes, they may be more careful next time.

It boils down to respect. If you respect people, even if they don't know the obvious, then they will have an opportunity to learn and thrive.

If PG acted immaturely every time someone admitted they did not know something that was obvious to him, he quite possibly would not be able to do what he does.


Why don't you ask your question later, once the client relationship part is no longer in play?


Yeah I hear that and it's a fair point, but even then there can still be an environment that discourages it.


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