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Weekend reading: Try the IndexView tool for a snapshot of US stock market gains

Good reads from around the Web.

The US blogger Mr Money Mustache has been making spendthrifts and complainers feel like they must try harder for years, to widespread acclaim and the occasional brickbat.

For my part I’ve always felt smugly on-side with Team Mustache, given that I’ve saved a big slug of my earnings for years and I’m well aware of how I (occasionally) spend my money.

However this week Monsieur Mustache opened up a new front in the doing-things-better-than battle, making me feel inadequate as a blogger as a result.

He’s only gone and create his own investing tool!

It’s called IndexView [1] and it looks like this:

Note to the easily befuddled: This is just a non-interactive screenshot of the tool. [2]

Note to the easily befuddled: This is just a non-interactive screenshot of the tool.

The idea of IndexView is that you can change the dates and see how time would have smoothed out your returns and spared your worry wrinkles, despite some crazy crashes along the way.

There are also various overlays you can add to the graph, such as the much touted cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio [3].

The tool only offers US data, but Tristan Hume – who everyone’s favourite mustachioed mister hired to do the coding – says he’d be happy to add another country’s data. However he hasn’t found any UK source that’s as easy to work with as Professor Shiller’s data is for the US.

I had fun playing around with it – give it a try.

Be nice if you could easily embed it in your own site like a YouTube video, mind.

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

Active investing

Other articles

Product of the week: The Guardian points out [20] that despite fears of an imminent Bank Rate rise, there are still good fixed rate mortgages around. Top of the crop is a new 5-year fix from First Direct [21] at just 2.89%.

Mainstream media money

Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site.1 [22]

Passive investing

Active investing

Other stuff worth reading

Book of the week: Readers of an active bent often ask for more articles about investment trusts. For those who can’t wait, The Financial Times Guide to Investment Trusts [35] is a good place to start – author John Baron has covered them for years for the FT and Investor’s Chronicle. It’s a slim book for the price though. Better for beginners than experienced discount jockeys.

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  1. Reader Ken notes that: “FT articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”.” [ [40]]