Dividend Vs. Growth Investing In 3 Charts

I recently wrote a piece about dividend investing and how different ETFs and groups of dividend growth stocks performed over the past decade. When I started assembling the data, I had a pretty good idea of what it would show me and I was forced to adjust my own thinking on several ideas. This got me thinking about what other misconceptions I might have. I decided to explore the difference between dividend investing and growth investing using several large ETFs to represent both styles.
The Data All prices are pulled from Yahoo Finance. Return percentages for a period ending present day are calculated using the "Adjusted Close" price to account for splits and dividends. For periods not ending in the present, "Close" price is used. The standard deviation is calculated using the rolling annual percent change. Put simply, my script calculates the percent change from the price on "X" day to the price 252 days before and then calculates the standard deviation of those figures. I make all the charts in Excel and Python scripts are used to pull and assemble the data.
I chose common ETFs used to represent both dividend and growth investing that also traded through the GFC (this was restrictive in itself). The dividend ETFs are: the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (VYM), the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG), and the iShares Select Dividend ETF (DVY). Growth is represented by the Vanguard Small-Cap Growth ETF (VBK), the Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth ETF... Read more