ShmoopTube

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finance a la shmoop. what is the S&P 500? well the S&P 500 is just an index- that

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is the standard and poors company assembled 500 stocks put them on a

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spreadsheet- this was a spreadsheet in 1957 -and they tracked them. [spreadsheet pictured]

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well the index had something like 37 shares of Procter & Gamble, the 23 shares

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of Ford, 18 shares of IBM and so on. in the 1950s the S&P 500 totaled something

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like 40 maybe 50 bucks on a good day. at the end of each day the elves who worked

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inside of the S&P Factory, they would add up the shares basically ignore any

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dividends and send to the press a total which was published to more or less

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everyone who cared about investing. well not nearly even a century later the 40 [man reads newspaper]

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to $50 reign to the SNP is today knock on the door of 2,500 .so without even

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having dividends reinvested you'd have made 50 times your money with dividends

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reinvested to buy more shares instead of keeping the cash to buy you know

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groceries or electric massage slippers. you'd have made over 70 times your [grocery display case and slippers pictured]

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original investment. welcome to America.

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