Perhaps your reply should be to 3catsanadog. That's who brought up the Wal-Mart/Costco questions.
And, well, I didn't choose 20 years because Costco wasn't publicly traded 20 years ago. Five years is a long time in the stock market. It was an arbitrary pick. I could have picked one year.
Yes, you did not bring up the Wal-Mart/Costco first, I noticed that after I posted.
And, well, I didn't choose 20 years because Costco wasn't publicly traded 20 years ago. Five years is a long time in the stock market. It was an arbitrary pick. I could have picked one year.
According to the chart I linked to Costco started trading around 1985. Since then Wal-Mart has been a much better 21 year investment. Also, based on the chart, if you look at the last 6 years or the last 7 years you can see both companies performed about the same.
I am not saying you mislead on purpose, certainly 5 years is a reasonable and standard time period to pick. But as a result of that pick your numbers are misleading. Approximately 5 or 5.5 years ago Costco had a huge dip in price. If you bought right after that dip than you would have good performance relative to Walmart which did not dip in price at that time. If you bought at any other time it does not look like Costco stock did any better than WalMart.