The Dow Adjusted for Inflation

Here’s the Dow divided by the Consumer Price Index over the last century. Of course, this doesn’t include dividends. Still, it’s interesting to see that in real terms, the market’s capital gain hasn’t been terribly much.

While the Dow is still well below its inflation-adjusted high from 12 years ago, that’s not unprecedented. There have been other times when the Dow has wallowed for decades at a real loss.

Of course we don’t know this yet, but it will be interesting to see if that March 2009 low turns out to be a generational low.

Posted by on December 22nd, 2011 at 3:51 pm


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