the Stock Does Better than the Investor

Hal Varian
New York Times, 3rd May 2007
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An investor who bought a value-weighted portfolio of stocks in the New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange in 1926 and held them until 2002 would have earned an average annual return of about 10 percent.

By contrast, an individual who bought in 1926 but moved his dollars in and out of the market in the same pattern as the average dollar invested in the market would have earned a return of only 8.6 percent a year.