S&P 500 Historical Returns Calculator
Averages hide the ride. This calculator uses the S&P 500's actual year-by-year total returns (dividends reinvested, in USD) to show what an investment made at the start of one year was worth at the end of another — including the crashes along the way.
What the data shows
Try a few periods and the lessons of a century of market history appear in miniature:
- 2000–2009: the "lost decade" — two crashes left ten-year investors roughly where they started.
- 2010–2024: one of the strongest runs on record, despite a pandemic and a −18% year in 2022.
- Any 20+ year span: every long holding period in this data ended positive — the historical case for patience.
Note the returns are in USD; a euro investor's result would differ with the exchange rate, sometimes helping and sometimes hurting.
Using history without being fooled by it
Historical returns describe the past, not the future — the next 20 years could be better or worse than any period shown here. What history does teach reliably: returns come in violent clumps, missing the recovery years is catastrophic, and time in the market has mattered far more than timing. To turn that into a plan, project forward with the S&P 500 calculator and start with our guide to investing in Europe.
Want individual stocks instead?
This tool covers the index. If you want the same treatment for a single company — what $1,000 in Apple in 2010 became, whether Tesla beat the index, how deep Nvidia's drawdowns were — our stock return calculators cover more than 125 stocks, indexes and cryptocurrencies with full monthly price histories and S&P 500 comparisons built in.