100-Year Stock Market Graph -- Inflation-Adjusted
In the chart above (click to expand), the red line shows Dow Jones Index year-end closing prices in "then current" dollars -- as they were reported at the time. That is how you normally see them, and how they were displayed in my original 100-year stock market graph. In that original chart, you could see that the Dow is now more than 100 times higher than it was in 1900! But what does that really mean? Does it mean that if some (very) long-lived soul had invested $1 in the stock market in 1900 it would now be worth more than $100? Yes, but that's misleading because you're comparing apples and cumquats; the first amount is