The editors of Wired magazine assembled the Wired Index many years ago. I never paid much attention to it, and assumed it had gone defunct. Turns out, it’s still alive, though I haven’t looked at any historical data yet, so I’m not sure at this point if it can be considered well.

If I have some time this weekend, I’ll do a little digging and see if I can find some performance data.

Update: The ticker for the Wired Index is IWIRX.  Compared to the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ, it’s done a bit better over the long haul, but not much. Compared to the Dow, it’s basically a wash. Now, compare them all to Apple, over the life of the Wired Index.

So, what does this illustrate? Well, for one thing, we know that the editors of Wired are no better at picking stocks than anyone else. It’s also a fine example of Chebyshev’s inequality, which, in essence, says that if you average a bunch of things together, the result is about average. It’s also a painful reminder that I should have bought Apple when I was thinking about buying it about 10 years ago.