如果将1万美元投资于8大主要指数，今天会值多少 *第二部分*

Yesterday, I made this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/s/9mXDBM4ZyA

A few comments started that it was a poor representation of index performance because I tracked the data from the opening of VXUS in 2011 rather than, say, the opening of QQQ in the thick of the dot com era.

So, here are three different starting dates with the same set of indexes (or their proxies if the modern day index wasn’t yet created):

1. What $10k would be worth today if you invested it the day QQQ opened (March 10, 1999):

• NASDAQ 100 (QQQ): \~$149k (10.6%/yr)

• S&P MidCap 400: \~$119k (9.6%/yr)

• VTI (pre-2001 proxy): \~$89k (8.5%/yr)

• DJIA: \~$88k (8.5%/yr)

• S&P 500: \~$85k (8.3%/yr)

• Russell 2000: \~$78k (8.0%/yr)

• VXUS (pre-2011 proxy): \~$43k (5.6%/yr)

• US Agg Bonds: \~$28k (3.9%/yr)

CHART

2. What $10k would be worth today if you invested it the day the dot com bubble peaked (March 10, 2000):

• S&P MidCap 400 → \\\~$104k (9.5%/yr)

• DJIA → \\\~$87k (8.7%/yr)

• S&P 500 → \\\~$79k (8.3%/yr)

• VTI (pre-2001 proxy) → \\\~$78k (8.3%/yr)

• NASDAQ 100 (QQQ) → \\\~$67k (7.6%/yr)

• Russell 2000 → \\\~$57k (7.0%/yr)

• VXUS (pre-2011 proxy) → \\\~$34k (4.9%/yr)

• US Agg Bonds → \\\~$27k (4.0%/yr)

CHART

3. What $10k would be worth today if you invested it the day the dot com bubble bottomed out (March 10, 2000):

• NASDAQ 100 (QQQ): \~$356k (16.6%/yr)

• VTI (pre-2001 proxy): \~$140k (12.0%/yr)

• S&P 500: \~$138k (11.9%/yr)

• S&P MidCap 400: \~$123k (11.4%/yr)

• DJIA: \~114k (11.1%/yr)

• Russell 2000: \~$102k (10.5%/yr)

• VXUS (pre-2011 proxy): \~$70k (8.7%/yr)

• US Agg Bonds: \~$21k (3.3%/yr)

CHART

What this data shows is that it’s actually mid-cap companies that performed the best on average in these scenarios. It’s also interesting that even if you invested the $10k in QQQ at the very peak of the dot com bubble, it still finished fifth in total returns, only 1.1% behind the DJIA and .7% behind the S&P 500.

The reality, though, is that most investors wouldn’t have been able to stomach holding onto a $10k investment in QQQ made at the bubble’s peak because of the underwater stretches that followed. For example, if you bought QQQ at the peak then you were below your starting money until around 2014. That’s fourteen years in the red. Even if you bought it at its 1999 debut (which eventually yielded the most returns out of all the indices) you were left underwater for about twelve years.

Bonds were last every time, but they were also the only thing that made the bad-timing decade survivable. If you bought at the 2000 peak, boring aggregate bonds beat every US stock index for the entire 2000s. In other words, they worked as the hedge they’re intended to be.

The first version of this post where the timetable starts around 2011 is real, but it’s the good-entry version. Slide the start date back to a bad moment and QQQ still wins in 2/3 scenarios, but with extremely long stretches of losses before eventually emerging on top. At the end of the day, if you have a long term investment horizon, the best strategy for major indexes like these is almost always hold. Otherwise you may get caught with your pants down and sell low and buy high.

**\\\Obvious caveat to all of this\\\:** Someone would have to be extremely unlucky to invest the $10k at the very top of the bubble, and extremely lucky to invest it at the very bottom. Most hypothetical investors would have dropped the $10k in somewhere between these two points, with a higher volume likely coming around the peak due to bull market euphoria.