ONe needs to realize that the mantra of buy and hold needs a lot of shoring up from time to time.
Charles Dow constructed the original Dow INsudtrials in 1896. today only GE is still on that list, all the other stocks have changed. Indeed, if the folks tha construct such indices did not constatnly change them the big 'gains' racked up over the years would not exist. Read how FNM and FRE are being droped from the S & P 500. Neither has the $5 billion in market capitalization that is required to stay in that index. Replacing older poor performing stocks with newer companies showing big gains keeps these markets going up. Ironically MSFT was added to the DOW even though it does not even trade on the New York Stock Exchange. By the time it was added, its glory days of annual increases were behind it.
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