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F&M Bank Winter 2010 Newsletter
F&M Bank Winter 2010 Newsletter
F&M Bank Winter 2010 Newsletter
Customer Spotlight
Winter 2010
volume 4 | issue 4
You are not alone if you are tired outside the S&P 500 had positive professor at Brigham Young University
of seeing headlines about the stock returns over the last 10 years. who specializes in personal finance.
market’s alleged lost decade. A Narrow Index He says the recent decade was one
Financial journalists and market The S&P 500 includes the of only four in which the S&P 500
pundits alike have gone to town with 500 largest U.S. companies and lost money—two back in the Great
this story: From the end of 1999 represents a large part of the U.S. Depression and the third covering the
through today, the stock market stock market’s capitalization. period 1999 through 2008.
has gone nowhere and investors But it is also a narrow index in the But other parts of the investment
have made virtually nothing on their sense that it is dominated by a smaller markets have offered positive returns
investments. number of large growth stocks (in the over the 10 years through Sept. 30. Susan Wathen
It makes for shocking headlines, three years leading up to the market The bond markets were positive.
crash of 2008, it was dominated by a 23 Years
but the story is, in a word, wrong. Depending on the risk and maturity
It is based on just one stock index— handful of financial stocks). of bonds they held, investors earned
the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index– It leaves out roughly 60 percent of from 5 percent to almost 7 percent per
which stood at 1437 at the end of the world’s stock market capitalization, year on bonds, according to indexes
September 2000. Ten years later, at and, of course, does not cover the maintained by Barclays Capital.
the end of this past September, it had government and corporate bond Small Stocks Gain
declined to 1141. markets either. Meanwhile, small U.S. value stocks
But most investors don’t put all This past decade has been a did much better, returning an average
of their money into one index. Those particularly tough time for the S&P of 7.7 percent per year, according to
who had just a little diversification 500, says Craig L. Israelsen, a the Russell 2000 value index.
For more information contact Karen Sutor at 573-221-6425 (Hannibal area) & John Stadsvold at 636-379-3426 (O’Fallon area)
Board of Directors: Bayard Plowman, Chairman • Donald M. Bastian • Michael Bukstein, M.D. • William H. Craigmiles
Tom R. Dorsey, D.V.M. • Alvin (Spike) Ehrhardt • Mark Gorman • Charles Hickman • Jack Martin • Stevens Plowman
Paul Richards • Bill Sharp • Phillip Smith • Gordon Spilker