Deflation:
The numbers show that from a peak, on a closing basis, of 381.17 on September 3, 1929, the Dow needed until November 23, 1954, to return to its old high. But that’s in “nominal” terms, without adjusting for the effects of inflation or its opposite, deflation. The Great Depression was a deflationary period. And because the Consumer Price Index in late 1936 was more than 18% lower than it was in the fall of 1929, stating market returns without accounting for deflation exaggerates the decline.
Dividends:
These payouts played a big role in the 1930s. When the Dow hit a low of 41.22 on July 8, 1932, for example, the dividend yield of the overall stock market was close to 14%, according to data compiled by Robert J Shiller, the Yale economics professor. So ignoring dividends, especially when yields were so rich, also exaggerates the losses of a typical equity investor.
The Dow vs the market
Many researchers consider the overall market as the best gauge of a typical investor’s experience. Perhaps the most celebrated illustration of the Dow’s failure to represent the overall market traces back to a 1939 decision to delete International Business Machines from the Dow 30 list. IBM wasn’t restored to the index until 1979. Norman Fosback, Editor, Fosback’s Fund Forecaster newsletter, has estimated that the Dow would have been more than twice as high in 1979 had IBM stayed in the index continuously.
It’s unclear when the Dow would have returned to its 1929 pre-crash high had IBM not been deleted in 1939. But because IBM’s stock was one of the best performers during the 1940s, greatly outpacing the Dow itself, it’s certain that its inclusion would have markedly accelerated the index’s recovery. So when did the overall stock market really make it back to its pre-crash peak? Just four years and five months after its mid-1932 low, according to data provided Ibbotson Associates. That seems remarkably fast, given that the stock market lost more than 80% of its value from its 1929 high to its mid-1932 low. But the quick recovery of the 1930s is consistent with the typical experience after other bear markets in the US.
According to a Hulbert Financial Digest study of down markets since 1900, the average recovery time is just over two years, when factors like inflation and dividends are taken into account. The longest was the recovery from the December 1974 low; it took more than eight years for the market to return to its previous peak. None of this, of course, guarantees that stocks will have a quick recovery from the market decline that began in October 2007. But it suggests that the historical record isn’t as bleak as it looks.
NY Times / Mark Hulbert
Source: Indian Express Finance
