Stop telling me the market is up 170%

[imoldernu]

FIFO, LIFO, FILO, LILO.
Who will be LO? You, or your broker?

[LeavingOhio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazingus Everywhere you turn, breathless reports are aging this bull market at five years and touting the total return based on the dead-cat-bounce after the mortgage investment debacle. The recovery period has created some nice returns, but anybody that wasn't contributing money throughout had to wait until the Dow passed through about 14,000 to start seeing growth again. Is a recovery a bull before it ever reaches a new high?

Certainly the market climb since March 2009 has been GREAT for people (I'm one) who has contributed money since then, but due to reinvested dividends, all my stuff (not including any contributions) had returned to October 2007 levels well before the Dow got back to 14,000.

No matter what your level of investing has been since the crash and recovery though, I would still consider it a bull market from March 2009 to today. Dow was at 6400 in March 2009...today it is well past 16,000. If I were in retirement when the market crashed, I would have taken income from other sources to allow my retirement portfolio to recover. Partly because of that big drop, I have now planned to have ~3 years of expenses saved in cash before I retire as a safety net. If the market tanks, I will draw from that cash pile and perhaps also Social Security (if I'm old enough to when the market tanks), thus allowing my stocks to recover. With taking Social Security also during that time, I might be able to leave the stocks alone for 5 years. This would have easily been enough time during this last market crash. Then, if I do deplete my cash reserves, I would slowly replace with money I take out of the market once it has recovered.

[target2019]

Comcast is up around 500% from the bottom.
Had to say it.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zorba That is a nominal return. The real return (i.e. inflation adjusted) is about 3 points lower. A nice data source for real and nominal S&P returns with dividends is here: S&P 500 index - Bogleheads

Correct. Generally all returns you see referred to are nominal returns unless otherwise indicated. For example, the returns the SEC requires fund companies to provide are all nominal returns.

For real returns you have to adjust and 3 points sounds about right.

[Al in Ohio]

The market is now up 169.9% with a standard deviation of 0.1%.

Is that better?

[RobLJ]

It's been a 5 year bull.
Due in part to the fact that we both were working and one of the boys was finishing college in '10 (so we increased 401/403k to close to the max) and due to my getting cautious in '06 and adjusting the portfolio allocation to 60-30, we were back to our former portfolio peak in Sep. 2009, which I find both amazing and an example of outstanding luck. The portfolio is now up almost 100% from the '07/'08 bubble peak, which I find both gratifying and a bit frightening.
The question of what I would have done as a FIRE and not working is a useful gedanken experiment, since I think investing while working and as a retiree are psychologically disconnected. That's one of the reasons I haunt the blog, to learn what the already FIRED do and think, so I'm thankful I've found the blog. I think the bucket approach, while not sound theoretically, is probably psychologically well-grounded on this point, in terms of investor behavior. But I'll see, 5-20 years on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeavingOhio Certainly the market climb since March 2009 has been GREAT for people (I'm one) who has contributed money since then, but due to reinvested dividends, all my stuff (not including any contributions) had returned to October 2007 levels well before the Dow got back to 14,000.

[aja8888]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 Comcast is up around 500% from the bottom. Had to say it.

Even in light of 98% of their customers despising them.