Saturday, September 29, 2012

Strong Long-term Dividend Growth Rate


Here's a graph I was surprised by.  It shows the annual growth rate for the real dividends on the S&P 500 index over the past 10-years.  Recent numbers are approaching 4% (ie. real dividends today are 4% per year higher than 10 years ago).

Aside from the big dip during the Great Recession in 2008/2009, the rate had been trending this way since the dot-com-bust.


Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Drought Continues

In a previous article (link) I talked about how the S&P 500 was near the biggest drought ever in real terms (with dividends re-invested).  Since then, we crossed the record and have now had 144 months without a new high (12 years!), in contrast to a 143-month drought that ended in January 1985.

However, the S&P has been on somewhat of a run lately, so it is only 8% away from reaching the previous high set 12 years ago.  It will be interesting to see how much higher this 144 goes before resetting the count to 0.  I'm bullish that it will be soon, but we'll see!