20 Years of ETF Investing

On the 20th birthday of SPY, the Dow closed at 14,054, a gain of 316.95% from the time when ETFs were first launched.

In 2013, the year-end rate was 3.04%.

Bernanke would continue to teach at Princeton for 12 more years, ultimately leaving to pursue a career that made him one of the most influential men in the world.

They released their new operating system, NeXTSTEP/Intel, before an Apple buyout in 1997.

Since then, the average tuition at a private university has nearly doubled to upwards of $32,000. A year at Harvard costs over $60,000.

When ETFs debuted, George Soros was fresh off one of his career-defining accomplishments; in September of 1992, he made an estimated profit of $1.1 billion when the Bank of England finally devalued the pound.

When the first ETF began trading, Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur thriller was still several months away from premiering.

In his 1993 letter to investors, the Oracle of Omaha stated:

“What we have going for us is a growing collection of good-sized operating businesses that possess economic characteristics ranging from good to terrific, run by managers whose performance ranges from terrific to terrific.”

Currently, the price to fill up can vary from $3.24 to $4.36 a gallon based on location.

MJ, who is now over 50, would win his third NBA championship when SPY was just a few months old. He then shocked the sports world by announcing he was retiring to pursue a career in baseball.

If you had invested in the precious metal in 1993, your current return would be over 200% and closer to 300% if you sold in 2013, missing the largest drop in recent history.

The former Drexel investment banker is best known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield “junk” bonds and for pleading guilty on felony charges of racketeering, securities fraud, and insider trading in 1989.

Joel Furr invented the term to describe a program by Richard Depew that sent an article to 200 newsgroups at once.

The performance was a ratings success and began the trend of the NFL signing big-name acts to play at the game.

Signed by Canada, Mexico and the U.S., this agreement created the North American Trade Bloc, but did not go into affect until January of 1994.

Other TV debuts in 1993 included Bill Nye the Science Guy, Boy Meets World, Beavis and Butt-Head, The Late Show With David Letterman, Frasier, Power Rangers, and The X Files.

Today, CERN is best known for its work on the Large Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook that Zuckerburg created while at Harvard, was still 10 years away.

Exxon was still number two in 2013, but GE and AT&T were replaced by Apple and Google, respectively.

The main selling point in 1993 for this new chip was the 64-bit storage and databus, along with separate code and data caches. Intel’s processors have over 8M cache and processing speeds upwards of 3.70 GHz.

There are over 300 models today. This was also the first year for Easy Bake Ovens and Vortex Footballs.

North Korea continues to generate buzz with its numerous non-nuclear missile tests.

This symbol, which no one can pronounce, is later re-dubbed the “Love Symbol #2″ and Prince became “The Artist Formally Known As Prince.”

Over the course of 20 years, China’s GDP has grown to over 8.22 trillion USD.

He also got engaged to his current wife, Melinda, that year.

The net worth of the Quickbooks and TurboTax creators was close to $4.15 billion.

Currently the oldest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he had just bought Dole eight years previously.

Federal government spending tripled since 1993, while the federal debt skyrocketed to over $17 trillion.