Dividends: The Quiet Engine of Wealth (So It Goes)

History? It’s a broken record. From 1940 to 2024, dividends accounted for 34% of the S&P 500’s total returns. Numbers don’t lie. People do. But the market? It just sits there, indifferent, like a cat watching a stock plummet. Compounding? That’s where the magic lives. Between 1960 and 2023, 85% of the S&P’s gains came from reinvested dividends. You read that right. Eighty-five percent. The rest is noise. The rest is panic.







