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The article is quite clear that it's a totally unreal hypothetical:

  Of course, once your investment had grown past a certain 
  point, it would be impossible to put into any stock
  without drastically affecting the stock’s price. In many
  cases, investing this volume of cash would be
  impossible [...] we also did not take into account
  trading fees nor changes in the composition of the S&P
  index. We also assumed that all companies allowed for 
  investment in fractional shares.

  Moreover, even if one made the impossibly optimistic 
  assumption that picking the best stock of the day is a 
  50-50 guess, there would be only a one-in-3.53 
  trevigintillion (3.53 x 1072) chance of matching these 
  results.
There's another humorous follow up on Quartz, positing that "[i]nvesting a day late every day would have returned 19.6% in 2013".[0]

[0] http://qz.com/158489/investing-a-day-late-every-day-would-ha...

Edit: spelling.




A lot of people here seem very upset that this isn't a recipe they can follow to riches. Clearly this is just an exercise illustrating wild growth, and an interesting article. No need for people to be so bitter.


19.6% is less than the S&P 500 index performance in 2013!




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