FYI: You constantly hear a drumbeat in the mainstream media: “Beat the market! Beat the market!”
But what if even the S&P 500 SPX, +0.29% one of the most widely followed benchmarks in the U.S., isn’t beating the market?
You may not think such a thing is possible. But the truth is that the S&P 500 is not “the market.” For one thing, it isn’t merely a cross-section of all listed stocks in the U.S. Nor does it simply select the 500 largest U.S. companies, as many people assume.
Instead, the 500 stocks in the index are determined by the Standard & Poor’s Index Committee. That’s a group of financial executives—including S&P employees, Wall Street Journal editors, and others—who write specific inclusion rules.
As shown in the accompanying graph, the S&P 500, including dividends, has been underperforming the so-called Total Market Index for over 18½ years. The total market in the U.S. consists of approximately 3,600 listed companies: large-cap, microcap, and everything in between.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shocker-the-sp-500-is-underperforming-the-market-2019-06-26/print
