It doesn’t really matter, just pick low-cost providers… plenty of online firms do this. Robinhood offers commission-free stock trades. Vanguard is good for low-cost funds and ETFs. Avoid high fees at all costs.

Thanks! We covered exit opportunities from S&T in a previous podcast:

https://mergersandinquisitions.com/podcast/sales-trading-exit-opportunities/

Um… sales at a tech company is probably the best method if you’re good at it. The real question is, why is that your goal? If it’s just because you want more money, you should re-think your goal because money yields diminishing returns after a certain point, and that “certain point” is earlier than most people expect.

Thanks for adding that (and sorry for the delay in my response, we had issues with comments not being accepted). That’s definitely a good point as well since the S&P completely fails to capture smaller companies.

Great Article.

What are the Exit Opportunities for Traders?

Based on your own Professional and Personal Experience: What Career-Paths and what Jobs do you know of, have the Potential to earn and make $1,000,000+ a Year?

Do you know what Jobs/Careers have the Highest-Potential of earning 7-Figure+ Salaries Year after Year?

Thanks! If it’s just the return for *one period*, as in how much the index changed over the course of one month or one quarter, it’s just the simple arithmetic return. But when you’re looking at the returns over an extended time period such as multiple years, you have to use the geometric average or else it will be incorrect (see: http://www.arborinvestmentplanner.com/geometric-average-vs-arithmetic-average-for-investment-returns/). People in media outlets often quote the simple arithmetic average even when they’re talking about the return over many years, which is wrong.

For dividends, it depends on whether you’re looking at just the price return index or the total return index. The price return index only looks at stock price changes so it ignores dividends. But the total return version reflects dividend reinvestment and counts dividends received + stock price appreciation in the returns.

I would add that the S&P 500 is a LARGE cap index with a (current) minimum market capitalization of $5.3 billion; i.e., “Unadjusted company market capitalization of US$ 5.3 billion or more for the S&P 500, US$ 1.4 billion to US$ 5.9 billion for the S&P MidCap 400, and US$ 400 million to US$ 1.8 billion for the S&P SmallCap 600.” (S&P Eligibility Criteria)

As a consultant, I often use to see the S&P 500 used as a benchmark without specific regard to the fact that it’s only “large caps.”