Stocks: Did You Match The Market This Year?

The end of 2014 is closing in rapidly and it's beginning to look like another double-digit year for the broad index of stocks known as the S&P 500. At this writing, the index is up 10.65% year to date. If you owned it through an index fund such as the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) you also got the dividends paid out, at this point a return equal to 1.79% on top of your price gain. If the market stays at about this level, that's comfortably over 12% on the year just for holding a single index fund. You...