Historian: Dividends Were 90% of Returns Until Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Then Everything Changed
Key takeaways
- The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and SPDR S&P 500 ETF wasn t one of them.
- His claim: "From the George Washington administration until Michael Jackson s Thriller album, dividends were 90-something percent of returns and price movement was very little of the gain.
- By 1982, the Fed Funds rate had peaked near 20% in June 1982, and the subsequent multi-decade decline in interest rates revalued every cash flow on earth.
Historian: Dividends Were 90% of Returns Until Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Then Everything Changed Don Lair Sun, May 17, 2026 at 11:43 PM GMT+7 3 min read SPY Historian and investor Joseph Moore has a way of reframing market history that makes long-time investors blink. On a recent Motley Fool Money appearance discussing his book How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (and Didn t), Moore drew a line through American equity returns at an unlikely cultural marker: the release of Michael Jackson s Thriller.
SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) paid $0.32–$0.41 per quarter in 1999–2000, with the most recent payment of $1.797 in March 2026, while price gains of 262.53% over the past decade now dominate total returns, signaling a fundamental regime shift where equity returns flow from price appreciation rather than dividends.
Since the early 1980s when the Federal Reserve Funds rate peaked near 20%, declining interest rates and tax-favored buybacks transformed the definition of a good stock from dividend yield to capital appreciation, making modern equity investors purchasers of future price appreciation rather than future corporate profits.