Saturday, December 22, 2012

S&P500 vs. Commodities (Oct. 2007 -> Dec. 2012)

Here we can look at how the S&P500 stock index has done in the past 5 years compared to a few commodities that adjust closely with actual, i.e. real rate of inflation (alternate inflation charts at Shadowstats). It gives a basic sum up of how the buy & hold guys have fared after real adjustment for inflation.

Data applied
All the data are derived from Yahoo Finance. We have the following commodity ETFs: GLD (SPDR Gold Shares), USO (United States Oil Fund), DBA (Powershares DB Agriculture Fund) against the Index ETF, SPY (SPDR S&P500). I have gotten end of day closing values of these ETFs going from 1/5/07 to 12/21/12.

Cumulative Log Returns


We can see that both agricultural commodities and gold have outperformed S&P500, which implies that stock indices are not likely to outpace actual rate of inflation, making buy & hold not all that attractive.

Daily log-return sample stats for the period, 1/5/07 to 12/21/12


 

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