GOLD 0.51% $1,391.7 gold futures

What, if anything, are people buying today in this 2 day selloff?, page-94

  1. 16,745 Posts.
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    "I as referring to US equties (I am American). I specifically mentioned the S&P 500 and you raise the All Ordinaries$#@@! WTF! Non Sequitur? Ad Hominem? Both?"

    Apologies.

    I raised the ASX200 because it represents...uh...equities; the things you claimed under-peformed gold.

    And...er...also, probably 95% of participants on HotCopper will be investors in ...um... Australian equities.

    So when you post on a forum that is overwhelmingly Australian in tone, content and nature, it is not an unreasonable assumption that your readers might not, magically, be aware that you are American viewing the world through a strictly American lens, and that they, too, should automatically do likewise.

    No matter. I apologise most profusely and unconditionally.
    I will not repeat the cardinal error of lumping Australian stocks in the "equities" category.


    "What (secular) bull market sees stock prices retreat in 2009 to 1997 levels, giving away twelve (12) years of gains? Let me repeat////TWELVE years of gains.?"

    Again, you are committing the (innocent, maybe) crime of Convenient Starting Base.

    For 1997 - your starting point - was a year that was preceded by somewhat spectacular returns [*], which - by extension - makes your secular bear argument somewhat arbitrary to the extent that your starting date is arbitrary.

    [*] 5-, 4-, 3-, 2- and 1-year returns for the period ending in July 1997 were, respectively, 125%, 107%, 100%, 62% and 40%, respectively.

    In other words, go back just one or two years earlier and suddenly the picture would look quite different.

    But while your starting point might be accidentally dubious, your end date is downright spurious. Spurious because 2009 coincided with the height of the not-so-small matter of the GFC.

    Why not - the logical question surely must be if secular bear market is what is being sought to be proven - simply use the current value of the S&P as your end point?

    In which case, even using your "convenient" starting point of 1997, means that equities (American ones) have doubled in value since 1997.

    On a compound annual rate that's growth of some 3.5%pa.
    Add to that the 1.5%pa-odd dividend yield on offer, and you get a total return of some 5%pa.
    That rate is handsomely inflation beating, and is a multiple of the rate of growth in national incomes in America.

    That is hardly the stuff of a secular bear market.

    In fact, it is unequivocally wealth creating.


    PS.
    For further edification, had your starting date been just a year earlier, the compound total annual return would be 6.6%pa.
    And it would be 7.2%pa if we start a year earlier again.
    And 8.0%pa the year before that.

    So you can see, different methods of data torture results in different confessions.
 
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