We’re busy behind the scenes today here at Political Calculations, but to mark the occasion of new highs for the U.S. stock market, we thought we might revisit the past for the S&P 500 and its index predecessors.
First, a quick look at the average value of the S&P 500 in each month since January 1871.
Now that you’ve seen the chart, you might want to extract some of the data for certain periods from it. That’s where our The S&P 500 At Your Fingertips tool comes into play, because not only can we tell you what the value of the S&P 500 or its predecessor indices was in any of those months, we can also tell you the index’ earnings per share and dividends per share, as well as the rates of return that were realized between any two of months that you might select, both with and without considering the effects of inflation and dividend reinvestment! We update this tool monthly.
But wait, that’s not all! Our Investing Through Time tool uses that data to estimate how much the inflation-adjusted value of an investment made between any two months from January 1871 through the present might be worth. If you’re the kind who wants to consider worst case scenarios, just set “June 1932” as the end date for your hypothetical investment…. We also update this tool monthly.
We also present a tool for the Quarterly Data for the S&P 500, Since 1871, since that provides the raw data we use for the earnings and dividend data in the other two tools. We update this tool annually, where it presently provides data through the fourth quarter of 2016.
Finally, we’ll revisit the data for the average monthly value of the S&P 500 in chart form, but this time, using a logarithmic scale.
