April 1, 2014

S&P 500 Sets Yet Another Fake Record This Year


From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. stocks kicked off the second quarter with broad gains Tuesday, propelling the S&P 500 index to a seventh record close of the year.

I’ll cop to being sort of pedantic here, but no, the S&P 500 didn’t set a record today, let alone its seventh of the year. Time series like this only make sense if you adjust for inflation, and if you do that the S&P closed 10 percent below its August 2000 peak. Granted, the S&P 500 has more than doubled since 2008, an immensely more impressive performance than, say, median income or the unemployment rate, but it’s still not in record territory.

If you’re curious to see what the real S&P 500 looks like, it’s in the chart below.

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