# S&P 500 100-Year Returns: Annual Returns by Year, CAGR & Worst Years (1928–2026)

Source: https://historyofmarket.com/articles/sp500-100-year-returns
Language: en
Data through 2026-11-12
License: data CC BY 4.0, text © History of Market — cite "History of Market (historyofmarket.com)" and link the source page. Terms: https://historyofmarket.com/license/
Section: History of Market

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.

Figure: [S&P 500 · Annual Returns — A Century of Calendar-Year Returns](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/annual/) · Data through 2026-11-12

- **Annualized total return since 1928** — 10.1%
- **Positive vs negative years** — 72 / 26
- **Worst drawdown (1929–1932)** — −86%

## The headline numbers

Across the 98 finished calendar years from 1928 onward, the S&P 500 has delivered:

- **Price-only annualized return:** 6.3%
- **Total return (with dividends reinvested):** 10.1% CAGR
- **Real total return (inflation-adjusted):** ~6.5%
- **Arithmetic mean of yearly returns:** 11.9%

The gap between the arithmetic mean (11.9%) and the geometric mean / CAGR (10.1%) is the *volatility tax*: 1.8 percentage points eaten by the math of compounding through losses. A dollar left alone since the end of 1927, dividends reinvested, is $11,976 today.

## How often does the S&P 500 go down?

Out of 98 finished calendar years, **72 were positive and 26 were negative**. That's a 73% 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.
- **36 years** returned more than 20%; **6 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 | −35.3% | Premature Fed tightening |
| 1974 | −25.9% | Oil shock + stagflation |
| 1930 | −25.1% | Smoot-Hawley + bank runs |
| 2002 | −22.1% | Dot-com bottom |
| 2022 | −18.1% | Aggressive Fed hiking cycle |
| 1973 | −14.3% | Bretton Woods collapse |

## Best years for the S&P 500

| Year | Total Return | Context |
| --- | ---: | --- |
| 1954 | +52.6% | Post-war boom |
| 1933 | +50.0% | Snap-back after Depression bottom |
| 1935 | +46.7% | New Deal recovery |
| 1928 | +43.8% | Late Coolidge boom, one year from the top |
| 1958 | +43.7% | Eisenhower-era bull |

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. 1928 is the exception that sets up the rest of the table: it was the last full year before the crash that produced 1931.

## 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:** 88% chance of positive return
- **10-year rolling period:** 94% chance of positive return; the losses cluster around the 1929 and 2000 peaks
- **20-year rolling period:** **100% positive** — never a negative 20-year window in the recorded history

*Windows are calendar-year windows over the finished years charted above, so every figure here can be checked against the raw series.*

See the interactive [buy-year/sell-year return matrix](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/annualized-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 **−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:

1. The decade started at a CAPE of **44×** — the most extreme valuation in U.S. history. A flat decade was almost mathematically required.
2. 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 10.1% going forward?

Probably not. The historical 10.1% 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](https://historyofmarket.com/articles/us-stock-valuation-now) for details.

> Total-return figures come from https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/annual-tr.json, price-only figures from https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/annual-returns.json, and the drawdown from https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/drawdowns.json — all refreshed daily, and the numbers above are regenerated from them rather than typed. Free for research and citation.

## Further reading

- [Shiller PE Today: Is the U.S. Stock Market Overvalued?](https://historyofmarket.com/articles/shiller-pe-current)
- [标普 500 近 100 年走势：1928–2026 完整复盘 (Chinese counterpart)](https://historyofmarket.com/articles/sp500-100-year-history)
- [美股历史最大回撤完整名册 (Chinese)](https://historyofmarket.com/articles/us-stock-max-drawdowns)
- [Annualized return matrix — pick any entry year, any exit year](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/annualized-matrix/)
- [Valuation × EPS driver decomposition — what drove each year's return](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/sp500-driver-decomp/)
- [Magnificent 7 share of S&P 500 cap — concentration not seen since the Nifty Fifty](https://historyofmarket.com/mag7/mag7-concentration/)
- [Annual returns interactive panel](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/annual/)
- [Historical drawdowns interactive panel](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/drawdown/)
- [5-year rolling annualized return panel](https://historyofmarket.com/sp500/rolling/)

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Data: https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/annual-tr.json · https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/annual-returns.json · https://historyofmarket.com/api/sp500/drawdowns.json
Machine index: https://historyofmarket.com/llms.txt