Hi Emlyn,

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts about the above data. We all have our favorite aspects of interesting data results. My favorite from the work I did above was suggested by my colleague, Ron Rimkus. He suggested that by creating a ratio of the value of one dollar invested in a buy-and-hold strategy, divided by the result of perfect market timing you could get a sense of the market's ability to predict the future. Essentially, and obviously that ratio is zero.

I did not report it in the above piece, but the result of absolutely perfect bad market timing (only buying on the down days) results in your one dollar turning into $0.02 x 10^-23!

Emlyn and Ashok, you both may be interested in my most recent "Fact File" piece published today on The Enterprising Investor: http://blogs.stage.cfainstitute.org/investor/2012/09/10/fact-file-the-s…

With smiles!

Jason