Not that long ago, Political Calculations mapped the extremes of the calendar year to calendar year performance of the S&P 500 stock market index over 105 years from 1900 through 2004. What Political Calculations didn't do was to find the average rates of return for the S&P 500 index for each given holding period over that interval. So, it was back off to the data mines, and what we found is remarkable: the average nominal rate of return for the S&P 500 is essentially flat for any stock holding period, whether it be 1 year, 50 years or 105 years!
Click for a larger image.
That's right! With vary little variation, the average of average rates of return for each investment holding period from the beginning of 1900 through the end of 2004 is 7.78%. So, if you're interested in calculating the future of your investment in the S&P 500 based on average annual rates of return, just plug 7.78% into Political Calculations' Investing: Future Value calculator for your results!
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
Political Calculations' Recession Probability Track shows the probability that the U.S. economy will be in recession 12 months from the indicated date (shown in red) while revealing the probability trend over the past four years.
Previously, the probability of recession peaked at 50% on 4 April 2007, which means that March-April 2008 was the most likely period in which the NBER would have found the U.S. to be in recession.
As it happens, they almost did. The NBER instead chose December 2007 as the beginning month of the most recent recession (we had found a 46% probability for a recession beginning in that month!)
On the Moneyed Midways
Political Calculations is also the online home of On the Moneyed Midways (aka OMM), a review of the best posts contributed to the week's best business and money-related blog carnivals. More than that, we also name one post in each edition as being The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere! and at the end of each year, we name The Best Post of the Year, Anywhere! as well as identifying the best blogs we found during the course of the year!
The link below will take you to the running index containing our most recent back issues (you can easily navigate the index to find older editions.)
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best
free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
ZunZun - Exceptional regression analysis tool. Wolfram Integrator - Solve integrals. Do calculus! Create a Graph - Easy-to-use basic graph-making tool. Many Eyes - Data visualization extraordinaire!
|
