So just a quick math problem:
Current price of the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index: 3789
Historical Average % Annual Increase: 11.88%
After plugging those 2 into a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) calculator, we see that in year 7 we have 8508 and that in year 8 it’s 9519 so basically, at some point just before the turn of the decade we’ll hit Vegeta Day…
The day that the S&P 500 tops $9000 a share. It’s all based on earnings going up though, so who knows with populations in decline and the world slowing down (theoretically). I guess the counter to that would be maybe profits still increase because things get more efficient but I don’t know about that.
Let’s see. One interesting thing before signing off was to cite Warren Buffet’s S&P 500 bet against a hedge fun. Basically the index beat the hedge fund.
“His victory didn’t always seem so certain. Not long after the wager started on January 1, 2008, the market tanked, and the hedge funds were able to show off their strong suit: hedging. Buffett’s index fund lost 37.0% of its value, compared to the hedge funds’ 23.9%. Buffett then beat Protégé in every year from 2009 through 2014, but it took four years to pull ahead of the hedge funds in terms of cumulative return. (See also, Hedge Fund Fees: Exotic Expenses.)
In 2015, Buffett lagged his hedge fund rival for the first time since 2008, gaining 1.4% versus Protégé’s 1.7%. But 2016 saw Buffett gain 11.9% to Protégé’s 0.9%. Another downturn could conceivably have handed the advantage back to Protégé, but that didn’t happen. At the end of 2016, Buffett’s index fund bet had gained 7.1% per year, or $854,000 in total, compared to 2.2% per year for Protégé’s picks – just $220,000 in total.”
So in essence put all of your money in the S&P 500 (use a fund with a low expense fee) and profit.