Saturday, August 27, 2011

Houston Texans Right to Let Vonta Leach Go


Before Vonta Leach signed with the Baltimore Ravens, I heard many fans argue that Houston Texans GM Rick Smith was being cheap and would regret not giving in to Vonta's request to become the highest paid fullback in the league. In essence, they argued the Texans should keep Leach at all costs. I loved watching Vonta block last year, and was sorry to see him go; Leach may very well be the best blocking fullback in the league. Even so, I think the Texans made the right decision. Here are three reasons why:

Leach's Impact Not as Great as Fans Think

Some fans argued that the Texans' running game will be much less effective without Leach. I don't doubt that there will be at least one occasion this year when

Saturday, August 20, 2011

How Much Would $1 Invested in the Stock Market in 19xx be Worth Now?

(last updated Sept. 2020)
How Much Would $1 Invested in the Dow Index in 19xx be Worth Now? This post addresses that question for any two years. The calculator works whether your initial investment was $1, $100, $10,000, or any other amount.

In addition, this calculator determines the average total yearly return (compound yearly growth rate) between the two years you input. Since total return includes reinvested dividends, it breaks out both the return attributable to dividends and the return resulting from price appreciation.

What If I Had Invested? -- The Observations Stock Market (Dow Index) Total Return Calculator



Just enter the starting and ending years, and starting investment amount. Optionally, you can enter an ending amount and find out what initial investment would have been needed to achieve that end result. You can use the arrows and sliders on the bottom of the calculator to scroll left and right. Enter data only in the gray cells. On some phones you may need to double click to enter data. On some computers, you may have to enter some fields more than once for it to "take." Please leave a comment if you are having problems.


$1 Invested in the Stock Market (Dow) in 1929

The graphic above shows the results of a hypothetical investment in the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average Index) at year-end 1929. The assumption is that the investment was sold at year-end 2010, with

Saturday, August 13, 2011

The 2010 10-Year Stock Market Projection

Note: The purpose of this post is just to archive the original (2010) projection for posterity. For the most recent projection, see The 10-Year Stock Market Projection. The original post follows....


Expected Return for the Next 10 Years

Previous posts have shown the results of backtesting the initial version of my market projection model. In this post, we'll develop projections of 10-year stock market returns that extend into the future where we no longer have the luxury of knowing the actual results.

Projected 10-Year Stock Market Returns


Stock market (Dow Jones Index) performance /returns forecast for next 10 Years
Projected Dow 10-Year Returns

The above graph (click to expand) shows the projected 10-year annualized returns of

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Best & Worst Years in Stock Market History

I have previously posted the best and worst stock market returns for periods from one to one hundred years -- usually as "rolling returns." In this post, we'll rank order the yearly returns from 1900 through 2012.

The Best Dow Yearly Returns since 1900


Best stock market yearly returns

The above table (click to expand) shows the best yearly performances of the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) index since 1900. I was originally going to show the top 25% (75th percentile and above), but expanded the range slightly to include 2009, a recent year of special interest. Note that the returns listed represent