toado85's comments

If you compare Trump to the S&P 500 over this time, he beats it if you don't account for dividends and loses to it if you do.

I'm sure it would... problem is, it doesn't go back far enough: https://www.quandl.com/data/YAHOO/INDEX_SPY-SPDR-S-P-500-SPY

S&P 500 change during this time: 122.74 - 2043.94

Total gain: 1565% Annual gain: 8.62%

So without accounting for dividends (the S&P 500 price doesn't), Trump was about 1% better each year.

Just updated to include dividends / dividend-reinvestment on by default. Thanks!

Just added dividends / dividend reinvestment. This makes a huge difference if you go back in the 70s and earlier.

Since so many people suggested it should include dividends and dividend reinvestment, I added that in, based on this chart: http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/table - as expected, it makes a huge difference if you go back a ways. (I had no idea dividends were so much larger in the 50s-80s). There's a toggle button to see with and without. Thanks again for the feedback!

Found this - http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/table - which I'll use to add a "include-dividends" mode (on by default).

That's technically what I'm using, however, if you look at the S&P 500 historic data - http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EGSPC+Historical+Prices - the Adj. Close is the same as actual close (meaning there's never dividends or splits to account for). That Adj. close is what the main site - http://stockchoker.com/ - uses for all symbols, so for pretty much everything else, splits and dividends are accounted for... but nothing else I've found goes back anywhere close to 1950 (and is also representative of the stock market as a whole).

So that's why I'm leaning toward still using the S&P500 data, but adding an "average" dividend payout each year (which I'll do some research on.. guessing a little over 1% a year).

Ewww... never heard of that happening. I tested on iPad with Chrome / Safari / Firefox. Is this on iPhone? If so, which one?

I'd love to use something like this or SPY or VFIAX rather than ^GSPC, but that's 38 fewer years of data available. I'll figure something out, though.

Hey guys... I made the page. Just saw lots of traffic coming from here so figured I'd come check it out.

A couple things I figured I should address after reading the comments:

1) Yahoo!'s historic S&P 500 data does not factor in dividends. So the returns would likely be 1-2% higher each year (which over time makes a very big difference). I should probably add a note on the page mentioning this.

Here was my conundrum when making the tool: I picked the S&P 500 because it's the only index that allowed me to pull very, very old data (nearly 70 years) using Yahoo! Finance; plus, it's often the "go-to" index for discussing overall market performance. But it's not "real" in the sense that you can't actually buy shares, and it doesn't pay dividends. So I could make up my own method for factoring in dividends, but I wanted to go strictly by the numbers. When you factor in financial advisor fees / bad decisions that new investors make, it's probably enough to "counter" the lack of dividends, if you want to look at it that way.

Plus, sites / companies are notorious for over-stating how much you can get annually by investing. I'd prefer to under-state it, if anything. Don't want to sell false hopes.

2) Regarding incremental, small deposits (and potential transation fees)... it's actually very easy to set up auto-investments in index funds that match the S&P 500 without ever incurring any fees. You could do $31 on the first of every month and basically simulate this.

3) Inflation would be useful to factor in, but it would also add confusion. This could be a cool add-on, but I'd have to think about the clearest way to demonstrate it. So would the 1950 daily amount be equivalent of $1 today? (so I'm guessing 20 cents or so?)

Hope you guys enjoy the site. Feedback is great (positive or negative - I'm not sensitive).