A History of Trust: Crews Banking Corporation

Today’s chart from BlackRock shows that from 1940 to 2015 life expectancy went up 15 years and the average years spent in retirement went from six to 37.

This chart is from today’s Wall Street Journal. Because of their heavy weights in the S&P 500 index, eight companies make up half of the stock market’s 14% decline year to date. It is notable that the value index was only down 3%, while the technology-heavy growth indexes are down 25%. As usual, the S&P 500, which includes both, splits the difference.

The Russell 3000 Index is made up of the largest 2,750 stocks in the United States.

From 2001 to 2017, the daily median income doubled for everyone in the world.

The rule of thumb is to buy low and sell high.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has published their updated U.S. Persistence Scorecard. A mere 2.2% of actively managed U.S. domestic equity funds in the top quartile for 12 months performance at the end of 2019 stayed ahead of three-quarters of their peers when measured two years later.

Past performance is no predictor of future success, but it is interesting to compare the past performance of different investments. These charts show the value of $100 invested in real estate (red) and the stock market (blue.) The chart above shows that over the last 15 years, the stock market was the place to be.

Real estate is unique since humans need a physical place to live and work. Economics says the price of those physical places is constrained by the cost of the physical labor to build them.