This chart was introduced to me by treeman awhile back. https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=VUG:DVY&p=W&yr=5&mn=0&dy=0&id=p58223850526 It is very useful in my mind as you can pick two stocks or etfs or whatever and it very quickly clearly shows you their relative performance over time. However, to be truly useful if anything paying a dividend is going to be compared it would have to include in the performance of the dividend stock or fund the amounts of dividends it pays over time. Does anyone know whether it does this, or it just tracks the ticker price and ignores dividends? Thanks!
A price + dividend chart would be useful if you're a shareholder and assuming you can set the initial date from which dividends will be aggregated to the share price, i.e. the date of your purchase. But misleading to everyone else.
Not sure I follow you tomorton. That chart I thinks looks at two securities, and goes back in time to the date the newer of the two came into existence. So you can compare the two from the inception of the latest to come into existence. I'm just asking if the comparison they give includes dividends, if it doesn't its not helpful at all, if it does it is very helpful to me at least.
I understand what you're trying to do, effectively chart return on your own investment or capital employed. However, without the start date equalisation for both charts, how can it help? Imagine two shares, both priced at $50, both pay $1 per share per year dividend but one has been in existence 25 years and one only the last 3. The aggregated chart would show them as vastly differing investment opportunities (based on past performance) when they're actually identical.
Would it tomorton? I would think the chart would just go back 3 years, to the start of the newest one. It would then show them as identical over that time. Anything else is nuts. We need to find some ETFs that are based on the underlying but that started at different times and compare them, let me see.
Well, it clearly doesn't go back all the way - I compared IVV and SPY and it only went back to 2014, even though they have both been around far longer. Any idea how to make it do what I was thinking it was doing? And any idea whether it included dividend performance in any event? Thanks!
Oh I see, it won't let you go back more than 5 years. Still, that is helpful, but the question remains whether the relative performance includes dividends. It certainly should to be useful, let me see if I can test it to confirm.