S&P 500 100-Year Returns: Annual Returns by Year, CAGR & Worst Years (1928–2026)
From 17 points in 1928 to over 5,000 today — what almost a century of S&P 500 data actually says about long-term equity returns.
The headline numbers
Across the 99 years from 1928 through today, the S&P 500 has delivered:
- Price-only annualized return: ~6.0%
- Total return (with dividends reinvested): ~9.8% CAGR
- Real total return (inflation-adjusted): ~6.5%
- Arithmetic mean of yearly returns: ~11.8%
The gap between the arithmetic mean (11.8%) and the geometric mean / CAGR (9.8%) is the volatility tax: roughly 2 percentage points eaten by the math of compounding through losses.
How often does the S&P 500 go down?
Out of 99 calendar years, 73 were positive and 26 were negative. That's a 74% base rate of an up year. But "up year" hides enormous variance:
- Only 7 years in a century landed within ±2% of the long-term mean.
- 30 years returned more than 20%; 11 years returned less than −20%.
- "Average" is almost never "typical" — equity returns live in the tails.
Worst years for the S&P 500
| Year | Total Return | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1931 | −43.8% | Depth of the Great Depression |
| 2008 | −37.0% | Global Financial Crisis |
| 1937 | −35.0% | Premature Fed tightening |
| 1974 | −25.9% | Oil shock + stagflation |
| 1930 | −24.9% | Smoot-Hawley + bank runs |
| 2002 | −22.1% | Dot-com bottom |
| 1973 | −14.7% | Bretton Woods collapse |
| 2022 | −18.1% | Aggressive Fed hiking cycle |
Best years for the S&P 500
| Year | Total Return | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1933 | +54.0% | Snap-back after Depression bottom |
| 1954 | +52.6% | Post-war boom |
| 1935 | +47.7% | New Deal recovery |
| 1958 | +43.4% | Eisenhower-era bull |
| 1995 | +37.6% | Tech-led expansion |
Note the pattern: the best years are almost always the year after a bottom. The crowd that fled in the worst year typically missed the snap-back.
Rolling-period probability of a positive return
The single most useful framing for long-term investors:
- 1-year holding period: ~73% chance of positive return
- 5-year rolling period: ~91% chance of positive return
- 10-year rolling period: ~95% chance of positive return — the only losses cluster around the 1929 and 2000 peaks
- 20-year rolling period: 100% positive — never a negative 20-year window in the recorded history
See the interactive buy-year/sell-year return matrix for the full picture.
What about the 2000s "lost decade"?
The S&P 500's total return from year-end 1999 to year-end 2009 was roughly −9% cumulative — a flat-to-negative decade. This is the most cited counter-example to the "buy and hold always works" narrative.
Two important framings:
- The decade started at a CAPE of 44× — the most extreme valuation in U.S. history. A flat decade was almost mathematically required.
- An investor making monthly contributions through the period — i.e. dollar-cost averaging — earned a positive return because they bought heavily at the 2002 and 2009 lows.
Should you expect 9.8% going forward?
Probably not. The historical 9.8% includes:
- An era of falling interest rates (10Y from 15% in 1981 to 0.5% in 2020)
- Multiple expansion (CAPE rising from single digits to 35×)
- U.S. economic dominance over the period
None of those tailwinds is guaranteed to repeat. Most return-forecast models built off CAPE / AIAE / Buffett indicator currently predict 3–5% real returns over the next decade — well below the historical average. See the valuation analysis for details.
All numbers in this article come from /api/sp500/century.json and /api/sp500/annual-returns.json, refreshed daily. Free for research and citation.