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This isn't what it looks like! Because when you take the whole S&P500 you get stocks that go up and stocks that go down. If you pick just stocks that go up, you
by tgb 9y ago
This isn't what it looks like! Because when you take the whole S&P500 you get stocks that go up and stocks that go down. If you pick just stocks that go up, you can get numbers well over 100%. Or negative numbers - imagine if the S&P 500 had fallen slightly but Apple had gained slightly - you'd have that Apple was -1000% of the S&P500's gains!
Though I just checked the data: in order to get past 100% with YTD from [1] you need to go to around top 112 companies, so my complaint isn't that valid. Only 159 of the S&P 500 lost value this year and almost all of those were very modest, so there isn't as large a cancellation as you might otherwise see. Nonetheless, you can always select the top performers and point out how they're outperforming the rest. If this were an honest infographic it would compare this value (% of total gains obtained by top N performers) to previous years.
[1] https://www.investing.com/indices/us-spx-500-components https://www.investing.com/indices/us-spx-500-components