And if you bought it a few days later (on June 13, 2022) you would be up 20.5% today even without dividend reinvestment. Trying to derive meaning from stock returns over such short periods is meaningless due to the inherent volatility of the market.
I have been dollar cost averaging straight into VTSAX for the past couple of years and have seen something like a 40% annualized return lol. That probably won't continue, but what a ride.
If you had reinvested your dividends, you'd have gotten your money back by the end of the war (and you'd only have lost 1 or 2% approximately six years later).
35 years later you would have an annual return (inflation adjusted) of 6% (6.5 times as much as you put in).
And this is somebody who invested in the absolute peak of the market in 1929, and then saw the worst crash in history, followed by the worst war in history.
If you had instead invested that money in a ETF that follows the S&P 500, you could have $2.109 in profits today. (Assuming $190 initial investment and S&P growth of 1.11% since May 20th)
VSTAX's 10 year return since 2010 was 11.29% annually (191% total return).
That means Universa could've lost around 23% every year until 2020, gain 4144% in 6 months and still beat the index (according to my naive arithmetic at least).
(0.77^10) * 4244% = 311% -> 211% total return
Curious then if you are simply not investing it at all?
Average returns over 10 years for something like VTSAX (total stock market index) is 13%, granted the last 10 years has been a bull market. 13% of $4M is $520k even half that is $260k before taxes which I think is comfortable to live on, exception of HCOL areas.
If it is a liquid asset, you should count unrealized gains as income. If you invested $100k in VOO last year, and it is worth $120k today, then you have definitely made $20k in the last year. That's $20k that you can choose withdraw and spend, at any time. Just because you choose to reinvest the $20k (ie, by letting it ride) doesn't change the fact that you've made $20k. It's really the same as collecting $20k in dividends and then enrolling in the dividend-reinvestment program.
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