S&P 500 Price chart by closing milestones

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pradador
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S&P 500 Price chart by closing milestones

Post by pradador »

I was playing around with some data and found it interesting to graph S&P 500 prices by the latest date that they reached a "permanent" all-time high. It takes the chart from this...

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...to this

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The large plateau from around 1997 through 2009 followed by the fast climb until 2014 helped me visualize better how stock-like returns can take 15-20 years.
Last edited by pradador on Thu Oct 02, 2014 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
red5
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by red5 »

That's a cool representation. I wonder if you could give the chart a "log" scale instead of "linear"?
Tamales
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by Tamales »

The second chart doesn't look right. For one, the plateaus don't correspond with the peaks in the first chart.
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pradador
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by pradador »

red5 wrote:That's a cool representation. I wonder if you could give the chart a "log" scale instead of "linear"?
Combined log scale chart:

Image
Tamales wrote:The second chart doesn't look right. For one, the plateaus don't correspond with the peaks in the first chart.
Here's a combined chart that better illustrates the progress:

Image
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Chan_va
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by Chan_va »

When looking at this time frame, you should look at inflation adjusted log charts. Then it becomes clear that we didn't really recover from the great depression till 1960, and what look like flat plateau's in the 60's and 70's were actually pretty severe downturns.

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kenyan
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by kenyan »

Chan_va wrote:When looking at this time frame, you should look at inflation adjusted log charts. Then it becomes clear that we didn't really recover from the great depression till 1960, and what look like flat plateau's in the 60's and 70's were actually pretty severe downturns.

Image
If you're going to do that, then you should include dividends as well.
Retirement investing is a marathon.
Tamales
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by Tamales »

I downloaded the SP500 from Yahoo and did a quick running peak detect algorithm in Excel:

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and a semilog version

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pradador
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by pradador »

Tamales wrote:I downloaded the SP500 from Yahoo and did a quick running peak detect algorithm in Excel:
I see the difference. I think I'm just misusing the term all-time high which is what a peak graph does. What I'm looking for is when a price is finally "locked-in" vs when a price is first reached. E.g. it reached 1,552.87 in the year 2000 but it didn't clear it "for good" until 2013. I find it interesting to instead see when we're actually "clearing" those closing milestones. Of course I say locked-in, for good, and clearing knowing that this can all change in a major drop.
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JoMoney
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Re: S&P 500 Price chart by all-time highs

Post by JoMoney »

kenyan wrote:...If you're going to do that, then you should include dividends as well.
:thumbsup
That's a problem with a lot of charts people put up. It's silly using price only charts. It would be like looking at a bond, not including the coupons, and saying bonds never earn any money - they're sold at one price and mature to the exact same price...
"To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks." - Benjamin Graham
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