Gartner Top 25: If the supply chain were a stock, would you buy it?

If the supply chain were a stock, would you buy it?

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but my 401(k) top of mind these days. So, as I was preparing our annual look at Gartner's 2017 Top 25 supply chains for the September issue of SCMR, I wondered which would've performed better over the last year: A $27,000 investment in an S&P 500 index fund or a $27,000 investment in the 25 publicly-traded companies in Gartner's 2016 Top 25 plus the two supply chain master's in that year's ranking. I'm going to call it the Gartner Index.

To answer the question, I invested $1,000 of pretend money using a September 1, 2016 purchase price in each of the 27 companies from the 2016 Top 25, or $27,000 total. I then invested $27,000 in the S&P 500 index on the same date – again, pretend money.

Yesterday, August 31, 2017, marked one year. How'd we do?

The Gartner Index returned a respectable 8.43%, not including dividends, leaving me with $29,486 on my $27,000 investment. I'd take that.

But, if you're a follower of John Bogle's advice at Vanguard, you've probably already guessed that the same $27,000 in the S&P 500 beat the supply chain index by $1,255, delivering a 12.17% return for $30,741.

I'm going to create a new 2017 index and post a quarter by quarter tale of the ticker tape.

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