Investing
Investing monthly starting at the 2007 market peak
In October 2007 the American market reached a high it would not see again for more than five years. This plan starts on that day: 500 dollars into SPY on the first trading day of every month, held through the crisis that followed and every year since, with dividends reinvested.
Final portfolio value
$525,926.25
Total invested
Absolute profit
Annualized return (IRR)
Max drawdown (MDD)
Compare scenarios
Pin these figures as scenario A, then change any input above to see the difference.
Portfolio value over time
Transaction log
| Date | Price | Investment | Shares | Cost | APB | Total shares | Portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-10-09 | $110.87 | $500.00 | 4.509867590287549 | $500.00 | $110.87 | 4.51 | $500.00 |
| 2007-11-01 | $107.01 | $500.00 | 4.672608979259223 | $500.00 | $108.90 | 9.182 | $982.59 |
| 2007-12-03 | $104.63 | $500.00 | 4.778602564580424 | $500.00 | $107.44 | 13.961 | $1,460.79 |
| 2008-01-02 | $103.23 | $500.00 | 4.843567306695651 | $500.00 | $106.36 | 18.805 | $1,941.20 |
| 2008-02-01 | $99.42 | $500.00 | 5.0292197668453715 | $500.00 | $104.89 | 23.834 | $2,369.54 |
| 2008-03-03 | $95.09 | $500.00 | 5.258264940834003 | $500.00 | $103.12 | 29.092 | $2,766.32 |
| 2008-04-01 | $97.79 | $500.00 | 5.113242992556141 | $500.00 | $102.32 | 34.205 | $3,344.78 |
| 2008-05-01 | $101.01 | $500.00 | 4.949828537939446 | $500.00 | $102.16 | 39.155 | $3,955.21 |
| 2008-06-02 | $99.42 | $500.00 | 5.028941558670147 | $500.00 | $101.85 | 44.184 | $4,392.99 |
| 2008-07-01 | $92.35 | $500.00 | 5.4139565302602275 | $500.00 | $100.81 | 49.598 | $4,580.58 |
Performance summary
| Total return | +361.34% |
|---|---|
| Sharpe ratio | 0.62 |
| Average buy price (APB) | $166.95 |
| Buy & hold final value | $791,947.72 |
| Buy & hold return | +594.69% |
| DCA vs buy & hold | Buy & hold better |
| Final shares | 682.853 |
| Investments | 228 |
| Average per investment | $500.00 |
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Nothing on this page is investment advice.
The same money invested all at once
Lump sum final value
Monthly plan final value
Difference
The lump sum invests $114,000 — the same capital the monthly plan eventually contributed — at the first closing price of the period and holds it to 2026-09-04. No interest is credited to cash waiting to be invested.
If you had started at the worst possible moment
The worst moment is defined as the high that preceded the deepest fall in this window: SPY closed at $110.87 on 2007-10-09 and then fell 55.2% to $49.68 on 2009-03-09. Daily closing prices throughout. The run below buys the same amount, at the same frequency, starting on that high and holding to 2026-09-04.
This window already begins on its own highest close, so the figures below are the same run as above.
Contributed
Final value
Profit
Annualised return
Maximum drawdown
Buying the top is the outcome a lump sum risks and a contribution plan spreads out. The figures above are what that spreading was worth over this window and nothing more.
The same plan on different funds
$500 on the first trading day of each month from 2007-10-09, run to 2026-09-04 on each series in the committed price snapshot.
| Ticker | From | Contributed | Final value | Total return | Annualised | Max drawdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QQQ | 2015-01-02* | $70,500 | $250,901 | 255.9% | 20.3% | 35.1% |
| SPY | 2007-10-09 | $114,000 | $525,926 | 361.3% | 14.4% | 55.2% |
| VOO | 2015-01-02* | $70,500 | $185,298 | 162.8% | 15.6% | 34.0% |
* This series begins later than the requested start date, so its run is shorter. A shorter run contributes less capital, which is why the money figures are not comparable between rows of different lengths — the return columns are. Prices as of 2026-09-04. Yahoo Finance chart API — daily adjusted close (dividends reinvested)
The longest recovery in living memory, bought monthly
This is the strongest test in this set, because the fall that followed the start date was not fast, it was long. An investor who put everything in at the top spent years underwater with nothing to do about it. A contribution plan spent those same years buying, month after month, at prices far below where it had started, and the average purchase price reported above is the record of that. What makes this run different from the 2020 one is duration. A crash that recovers in months rewards the schedule briefly; a decline that grinds for a year and a half and takes five years to recover gives the schedule an unusually long stretch of cheap purchases, and the position built during those years is what carried the following decade. The maximum drawdown above is measured on the plan's unit price and is the deepest in this set, which is the honest counterweight: the same conditions that produced the low average price were the conditions in which continuing to contribute felt least defensible. The count of purchases is the largest here as well, spanning most of two decades of first trading days. Note that this run uses SPY rather than VOO, because VOO did not exist in 2007. Both track the S&P 500 and both are reported on adjusted closes, so the comparison with the other pages remains fair, though SPY's expense ratio is slightly higher in reality than the price series alone reflects.
The lump sum at the worst possible moment
The comparison above puts this plan's entire capital into SPY at the October 2007 close and holds it. That is close to the worst entry point of the last twenty years, and it is exactly why the pairing is worth looking at: it isolates how much a long enough holding period can repair, and it does so over a period long enough that the answer is not an artefact of one quarter. What the contribution plan bought instead was a much lower average price and a position that was still being assembled while the lump sum was still recovering. The other pages in this set run the same comparison from far kinder starting points, and reading them together is the only way to see the range rather than a single anecdote.
Questions about this backtest
Why SPY instead of VOO?
VOO launched in 2010, so it cannot be backtested to 2007. SPY tracks the same index and has traded since 1993.
Does this include the dividends paid during the crisis?
Yes. The series is adjusted close, so dividends are reinvested on their payment dates, which matters more over a period this long than over any other run in this set.
Other backtests worked out
- Investing 500 dollars a month in VOO since 2015
- Investing 100 dollars a month in VOO since 2015
- Investing 500 dollars a month in QQQ since 2015
Run your own plan in the Dollar-Cost Averaging Calculator and Backtest