Something about that doesn't seem right. What about Apple or literally any of the other mega corps that have passed or closed to approach the 1T market cap?
https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
MCD is 11.29% per year for the last 5 years. AAPL is 28.2%, MSFT is 26.49%, GOOG is 20.91%.
Even a riskless SP500 investment earned 11.139%
McDonald's did outperform both SP500, Amazon and Facebook.
My point was that this kind of comparisons are true when you speak about sectors (growth vs dividend growth the first is gonna outperform in the long run, it's designed to...) but if you compare on a stock basis you find plenty of tech mega caps outperformed by old boring business if dividends are included, McDonald's was just a random example.
MCD outperformed AMZN.
META (14%+) outperformed MCD.
SP500 was equal to MCD.
> if you compare on a stock basis you find plenty of tech mega caps outperformed by old boring business if dividends are included, McDonald's was just a random example.
What is a stock basis? If your unit of accounting is money, and your goal is money, then the total return calculator, which includes dividends, linked above is going to give you the only answer.
I cannot conclude there are not plenty of businesses out there outperforming the tech megacaps. Amazon might be lagging in the 5 year period, but you have to look on a timeline of decades. There is a reason these companies are at the top of the market cap rankings. There are entire sectors of other old businesses have not increased in decades by what just AAPL or MSFT alone have grown.
Edit: This also means that much of the money you would make from owning something like McDonald's can't be seen by just charting the growth in stock price. You have to also look at the money you could make by taking the dividends and putting that somewhere.
What about the money you could lose by taking the dividends and putting that somewhere?
That said, sibling post disputes if the factoid is even true. So, not clear what the full point is. I am personally sympathetic to the idea that dividends used to be one of the defining differences between profit and non-profits. You have to get into buybacks to fully see the differences today, I think. And that does feel like a very different thing. The argument doesn't get any favors from false factoids, though. :(