[rm999]

The y-axis has actual meaning: it tells you the purchasing power of a public stock, which will never be 0.

What you could do is normalize it by the value of the stock at the start of the chart, which would make the charts start at 1. On a log plot this is the equivalent of dividing all the values by the starting value, which moves the lines up/down but does not change their shape. This could make it easier to compare the lines, but in doing so, you throw out information (the real value of the y axis).

[pedrosorio]

> The y-axis has actual meaning: it tells you the purchasing power of a public stock, which will never be 0.

If we are trying to visualize the total return of a given asset since 1987, how is the price of a single stock (an arbitrary unit) in 1987 or any time since, relevant data?

The ROI expressed as a percentage on the y axis (with 0% at the beginning of the period) would be a much better visualization of the relative returns among asset classes throughout the period.

Currently I get USD < VBMXFX < VFINX at the beginning of the chart, for reasons that have nothing to do with the total return since 1987.

The drawdown chart is even more confusing with the USD starting at -81%. If we were plotting a chart of drawdown of multiple currencies, the older ones would start lower (since they've had more time to be affected by inflation) which only makes it hard to visualize the answer to the question "how did they do since 1987".

[epgui]

As another commenter points out, it completely depends on what feature of the data you're trying to highlight, or what question you're trying to answer.

I don't think anyone looking at this chart really cares about the inflation-adjusted value of one share in a specific year, I think the main point of this chart is the real returns of stocks, bonds and cash (or an approximation of such represented by the selected indices), over time.