Word to the wise: the crash is coming, get out of the stock market now ⚠ 👀 😱

[progree]

9. Thank you. All your points are right on too

Why I chose VFINX is that I don't know anything equivalent for S&P 500 that includes dividends, not because I'm a fan of index funds.

And why I chose the S&P 500 is because it is cap-weighted average of 80-85% of the total U.S. market and is the one professionals use for benchmarking in general (almost never the Dow for good reason).

The ideal would be a total U.S. stock market index with dividends -- that would capture 100% of U.S. equities in market cap weighted (except for penny stocks and shrapnel like that). But I don't know where I can get that data that goes very far back (before about 1990) -- .

EDIT: anyway, every comparison I've done between the S&P 500 and the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index is that they are very very close in performance.

I'm just trying to represent the U.S. equity market as a whole, and I don't know a better way.

I could always cherry-pick a stock or a sector fund that way beats the S&P 500, but it wasn't my goal to show how the best stock or fund would have performed. But rather my best shot that I know how of how the average investor in equities would have done had they bought at the most inopportune time in the recent 2 or 3 decades -- excepting the real recent stuff of the past few days.

I enjoy your almost daily commentary in the Economy Group's Stock Market Watch by the way.

Now a confession -- I am a fan of index funds, but that's not why I chose VFINX or the S&P 500. I am trying to broaden out however -- been trying to figure out what these people are doing:

"Closed End Funds - Open Discussion" (CEFOD) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/703483756914269