Update: The S&P 500 at Your Fingertips

We've just updated our signature tool The S&P 500 at Your Fingertips to incorporate all the latest stock market and inflation data through August 2007.

Why do we wait so long to update the tool? After all, August ended nineteen days ago. As it happens, we are, more or less, held hostage to when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases their inflation data for the previous month. It just wouldn't do to only make partial updates for the The S&P 500 at Your Fingertips tool!

In any case, here is the S&P 500's compound annual growth rates Since January 1871, Since August 2006 (Year over Year) and Since January 2007 (Year to Date):

Selected S&P 500 Performance Data, January 1871 through August 2007
Annualized Rates	Nominal Rate of Return (%)	Rate of Inflation (%)	Real Rate of Return (%)
Since January 1871	9.15	2.08	7.07
Year over Year	15.17	1.97	13.20
Year to Date	5.53	4.70	0.83

For fans of dividends, the following chart shows the annual dividends per share (not adjusted for inflation) for the S&P 500 since January 1871:

Since January 1953, Annual Dividends per Share in the S&P 500 have grown at a very stable average annualized rate of 5.4%.