Company A started in 1926. It is either still in business, consolidated with other companies, or gone bust. If the company has gone bust (which I would suggest

Company A started in 1926. It is either still in business, consolidated with other companies, or gone bust. If the company has gone bust (which I would suggest is most of them) it has probably underperformed treasuries, it is of course possible that dividends could make up for the total loss of capital though. A company that exists from 1926 - 1944 has seen its value go from 0 to X and back to 0, whereas the Treasuries haven't. Consolidation muddies the waters because you have potentially 10s of companies into 1. You've highlighted 1 way of accounting for that, there are other legitimate ways of doing it though. I was though thinking more that you can't look at a current list of stocks and a 1926 list of stocks, you aren't necessarily comparing apples to apples.