Miscellaneous desk
< July 8	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 10 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 9[edit]

Stock price of the top twenty companies of each decade[edit]

If a person purchased 100 shares of the top thirty companies starting in 1900, what would be their value today. This NOT the Dow 30 because the companies always change in the Dow index. Most of the original companies would be bankrupt or bought by others, eg horse carriage manufacturers, whale oil products, Kodak film etc. Another way of looking at the question is literally if you "buy and hold" the top thirty companies, what would be the value today and which decade would be most profitable. If it could be plotted in graph form, it would be very interesting.

24.190.5.11 (talk) 00:14, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fairly sure the answer will depend significantly on what you do with the cash you'll receive from dividends and also mergers or acquisitions etc. If you just keep it as cash, you're going to end up with a lot less due to the effectively wasted time value of money. Even if you just chuck it in the bank, this still won't do well. If you acquire more shares when possible, you have to decide what you're going to acquire. Equal shares in value or number (as per your original question) of the current at the time top 100 companies as far as possible? This is quite complicated since it may take a while to get enough for 1 share. Keeping equal shares, I presume in number not value, of all the original companies or their current equivalents as far as possible? Remembering that after a while, what you actually own is going to be quite complicated due to M&A, spinoffs etc. Using the cash to reinvest in wherever it came from as far as possible? Again, due to M&A, spin offs etc, this is going to be quite complicated. I mean in some cases you won't even be able to if the company has gone private etc. And you also have to decide on precisely how you'll handle successors. If cash comes from a spinoff, do you reinvest only in that spinoff, or in the original company and any successors? P.S. It's worth remembering that index funds, which are trying to follow an index so in some ways have an easier job and have a lot more money so in some ways, but I guess not all, also have an easier job, these aren't simple tasks [1] although of course you don't have to track the index overtime in general like they do. Nil Einne (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]