Investing
Investing 1000 dollars a month in VOO since 2020
This plan started in January 2020 and put 1000 dollars into VOO on the first trading day of every month afterwards. Six weeks in, the market fell faster than it ever had. The plan kept buying, because it had no mechanism to do anything else, and the figures above are what that produced by the snapshot date.
Final portfolio value
$145,205.45
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-02 | $271.11 | $1,000.00 | 3.688504333623742 | $1,000.00 | $271.11 | 3.689 | $1,000.00 |
| 2020-02-03 | $270.59 | $1,000.00 | 3.695688166702145 | $1,000.00 | $270.85 | 7.384 | $1,998.06 |
| 2020-03-02 | $257.89 | $1,000.00 | 3.877562099157018 | $1,000.00 | $266.39 | 11.262 | $2,904.34 |
| 2020-04-01 | $206.42 | $1,000.00 | 4.844484772088792 | $1,000.00 | $248.35 | 16.106 | $3,324.65 |
| 2020-05-01 | $237.15 | $1,000.00 | 4.216688895644962 | $1,000.00 | $246.03 | 20.323 | $4,819.64 |
| 2020-06-01 | $256.46 | $1,000.00 | 3.899278516496093 | $1,000.00 | $247.71 | 24.222 | $6,211.97 |
| 2020-07-01 | $261.83 | $1,000.00 | 3.819304138063261 | $1,000.00 | $249.63 | 28.042 | $7,342.05 |
| 2020-08-03 | $277.08 | $1,000.00 | 3.609110260483924 | $1,000.00 | $252.76 | 31.651 | $8,769.65 |
| 2020-09-01 | $297.29 | $1,000.00 | 3.3637279793547834 | $1,000.00 | $257.04 | 35.014 | $10,409.39 |
| 2020-10-01 | $285.27 | $1,000.00 | 3.5054522050871824 | $1,000.00 | $259.61 | 38.52 | $10,988.54 |
Performance summary
| Total return | +79.27% |
|---|---|
| Sharpe ratio | 0.82 |
| Average buy price (APB) | $394.95 |
| Buy & hold final value | $211,531.33 |
| Buy & hold return | +161.15% |
| DCA vs buy & hold | Buy & hold better |
| Final shares | 205.09 |
| Investments | 81 |
| Average per investment | $1,000.00 |
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 $81,000 — 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: VOO closed at $282.47 on 2020-02-19 and then fell 34.0% to $186.45 on 2020-03-23. 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.
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
$1,000 on the first trading day of each month from 2020-01-02, run to 2026-09-04 on each series in the committed price snapshot.
| Ticker | From | Contributed | Final value | Total return | Annualised | Max drawdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QQQ | 2020-01-02 | $81,000 | $162,084 | 100.1% | 20.7% | 35.1% |
| SPY | 2020-01-02 | $81,000 | $144,826 | 78.8% | 17.3% | 33.7% |
| VOO | 2020-01-02 | $81,000 | $145,205 | 79.3% | 17.4% | 34.0% |
Every row contributes the same money on the same days, so the columns are directly comparable. Prices as of 2026-09-04. Yahoo Finance chart API — daily adjusted close (dividends reinvested)
Buying through a crash you did not see coming
The interesting property of this start date is that it is early enough to be badly timed and recent enough that the recovery is still the dominant part of the record. A plan that began in January 2020 bought at the top, bought again during the fall, and bought all the way back up, and the average purchase price reported above is the arithmetic of that sequence rather than anybody's judgement. This is the case for a contribution plan stated as plainly as it can be stated: the schedule bought the crash automatically, at a moment when almost nobody chose to. It is also the case against reading too much into it, because the recovery was unusually fast, and a plan that started in front of a slower one would show something less flattering. The maximum drawdown above is measured on the plan's unit price, so the crash appears at its real depth and is not hidden by the contributions that arrived during it. That distinction is not cosmetic. Measured on the balance, a plan adding a thousand dollars a month through a falling market can report almost no drawdown at all, which would be a comforting number and a false one. The count of purchases is a count of months, and every one of them is visible in the average price.
The lump sum on the same start date
The comparison above invests the whole of this plan's capital in January 2020 and holds it, which means it bought at the top and had nothing left to buy the fall with. That is the entry point people imagine when they argue for spreading contributions out, so the two figures above are worth reading before assuming the answer. The thing that decides the ordering is not the crash but what came after it: a lump sum that survives the fall owns its whole position for every year of the recovery, while the contribution plan is still assembling one. The deeper and the longer the decline, the more the schedule is worth; the faster the rebound, the more the head start is worth. Read which way this particular period fell out rather than assuming either.
Questions about this backtest
Did the plan sell anything during the crash?
No. The engine never sells. Every contribution buys at that day's close and the position is held to the end of the period.
Why start in January 2020 specifically?
It is the last full month before the fall, so the plan begins at a peak. That makes it a test of the schedule rather than a demonstration of good timing.
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