Indexes of U.S. 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 Center for Research in Security Prices value-weighted portfolios of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks. Daily stock returns from Dow Jones (1972) and Standard and Poor's (1986) are compared and contrasted with the returns to the Center for Research in Security Prices value-weighted portfolios of NYSE and American Stock Exchange 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). Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.