13 September 2012: The Fed launches open-ended QE3
The Federal Reserve announced a third round of quantitative easing, buying $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month with no fixed end date, until the job market improved substantially. Critics nicknamed it QE-Infinity. Stocks and housing prices rose as rates stayed low, and the program ran until late 2014. Investors learned to watch the Fed as closely as company earnings.
The lesson: Easy money lifts asset prices, but what the central bank gives, it can later take away.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in S&P 500 index fund at the start of 2012 → $5,312 today, vs $5,312 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2012, the year it happened. That is 5.3 times the money, but $0 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What S&P 500 index fund teaches: Owning the whole market removes the risk of picking the wrong company but not the risk of a lost decade, so time horizon matters as much as diversification.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $1,280 | $5,312 | $5,312 |
| 2015 | $2,060 | $3,301 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $2,700 | $2,519 | $2,519 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought S&P 500 index fund? Every starting year and the full story →
More S&P 500 index fund history
- 5 February 2018: Volmageddon: the Dow drops 1,175 points
- 19 February 2020: The S&P 500 hits a record before COVID
- 29 February 2020: The US reports its first COVID-19 death
- 3 March 2020: The Fed makes an emergency rate cut
- 6 March 2009: The S&P 500 touches 666
- 9 March 2009: The bear market bottoms
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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