Image credit: Caspar David Friedrich, “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” ca. 1818, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Wikimedia Commons
By Jason Zweig | Apr 21, 2016 8:34 am ET
Forget all the suspense about whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, each barely 1% below the all-time highs they set last May, will rise to set new records.
Counting dividends, the S&P 500 already has, reports Howard Silverblatt, the maven of all things index-related at S&P Dow Jones Indices. The S&P 500 Total Return Index, hit its previous all-time high of 8523.61 on July 20 of last year. It surpassed that record on Monday, closing at 8529.03, and has since risen another 0.4% to close at 8562.34 on Wednesday.
For some reason, investors still focus almost all their attention on “price-only” index levels that don’t include dividends. Measured the way many investors experience it today, with dividends automatically reinvested, the stock market’s new all-time high isn’t in sight. It’s already in the rear-view mirror.
Source: WSJ.com, MoneyBeat blog
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/04/21/sp-500-already-at-a-record-if-you-count-dividends/