From the End of 1990 Until the End of 2005

question 289

Essay

From the end of 1990 until the end of 2005, the Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) US stock index rose from 330.2 to 1248.3. If an investor had invested $50,000 in a portfolio of the shares of the 500 companies at the end of 1990 in the Index, what would the value of those shares have been at the end of 2005? (This calculation considers only the price appreciation of the original shares. It does not include the portion of the growth in the portfolio's value resulting from the receipt and reinvestment of dividends.)

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Definitions:

Distribution

A statistical term describing the way values of a variable are spread or dispersed across a range.

Significance Level

A threshold chosen by the researcher to denote the probability below which a result is considered statistically significant, indicating that the observed result would be unlikely under the null hypothesis.

Kruskal-Wallis Test

A nonparametric statistical test used to compare three or more groups on a continuous or ordinal outcome without assuming a normal distribution among the groups.

Crawling Ages

Typically refers to the developmental period in human infants when they start to move about on their hands and knees, usually between 6 to 10 months of age.