I'm a bit puzzled by this. People always compare against Price Return indices like the S&P 500, the Dow Jones, NASDAQ, etc. They never compare against the Total Return index or the Net Total Return index. All of these indices have a Total Return variant. People just almost never use it.
Why? A Price Return index like the S&P 500 is rather meaningless on its own without dividend data, and the only way to make it meaningful is to essentially do the calculations that are already baked into the (Net) Total Return index. Why not use that Total Return index directly? All of these major indices have Total Return variants, but nobody uses them. I really don't get it.
For example, "beating the market" generally refers to beating the S&P 500. But who cares? It's the S&P 500 Net Total Return that you have to beat, not the S&P 500...
Submitted August 15, 2020 at 09:30PM by game-of-throwaways https://ift.tt/3kNcABi
