Indexes of United States Stock Prices from 1802 to 1987

Abstract

Monthly stock returns from Smith and Cole [1935], Macaulay [1938] and Cowles [1939] are compared and contrasted with the returns to the CRSP value and equal-weighted portfolios of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks. Daily stock returns from Dow Jones [1972] and Standard & Poor's [1986] are compared and contrasted with the returns to the CRSP value and equal-weighted portfolios of NYSE and American Stock Exchange (AMEX) stocks. Effects of dividends, nonsynchronous trading and time-averaging are analyzed. Splicing together the best indexes gives monthly data from 1802-1987 (2,227) observations) and daily data from 1885-1987 (28,884 observations.)