Countless hours have been spent by stock market investors researching the historic performance of the S&P 500 stock market index but until now, they've had to slog through spreadsheets or go datamine other reams of data to be able to extract the data they're after, and that's before doing any number crunching! Now however, everything has changed because we here at Political Calculations are putting the entire encapsulated history of the S&P 500 at your fingertips!
We've taken the raw data from the sources linked above, and made it easily accessible by selecting a month and year in our tool below. The tool will provide the average index value of the S&P 500 for the given month and year, the associated dividends and earnings for that month and year, not to mention the dividend yield and the price to earnings ratio. For good measure, we threw in the value of the Consumer Price Index as well!
But wait, that's not all! We did all this for a second date that you might select as well - and then we really get busy! Our tool will find the annualized rate of return for an investment made in the S&P 500 between the two dates you select, both with and without considering the reinvestment of dividends in the index.
And then, there's even more! For no extra charge, we'll also factor in inflation into the calculations and find the rate of inflation between the two dates you select, not to mention the inflation-adjusted rates of return for an investment made in the S&P 500 between the two dates as well!
Better than sliced bread? Maybe not, but we couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our second anniversary today. Enjoy!
Note: The earnings and dividend data from 2000 onward may be subject to change as the index' component companies may restate portions of their financial data for various reasons.
Who knows? Maybe this tool will end up on EH.NET!
Update 16 July 2009: We now have a tool that you can use to find the inflation-adjusted value of a one-time or series of hypothetical investments in the S&P 500 between any two months since January 1871: Investing Through Time!
Approximate Schedule of Updates
We update our S&P 500 performance tool each month after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the previous month's Consumer Price Index for Urban areas, which we need to determine the real rates of return for the S&P 500 through that month. Here is the latest schedule of releases from the BLS:
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Update Notes
We periodically update the earnings and dividend data used in the tool presented on this page as this data is revised by Standard & Poor. The log below describes the major revisions we've made to our tool over its history.
- 19 November 2008: We've modified our calculations for adjusting the nominal rates of return for inflation to be more precise. We had previously been using the Fisher equation to find the real rates of return.
- 14 May 2008: Recalculated all between-quarter dividend and earnings data to minimize rounding errors. This change primarily affects older data (post-2000 data is unaffected) and will only have a slight effect upon dividend reinvestment calculations for very long term investments.
- June 2007: Bonus update! S&P has made minor revisions in its earnings and dividend data going back to September 2004. In making these adjustments, we realized that we could project the index's quarterly dividend levels pretty accurately, so we can now do monthly updates! Now, the only thing we need to wait for is the inflation data that is released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics sometime in the third week of each month before next updating the tool all the way through the end of the previous month!
Labels: current, investing, SP 500, tool
- posted by Ironman at 6:00 AM | Permalink | |
