Investing
Investing 500 dollars a month in VOO since 2015
This page runs one plan and reports what it did: buy 500 dollars of VOO on the first trading day of every month, starting in January 2015, never selling, and reinvesting dividends. The figures above are the output of the same engine the simulator above runs, over the closing prices recorded on the snapshot date.
Final portfolio value
$185,297.60
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-01-02 | $154.78 | $500.00 | 3.2304603987551097 | $500.00 | $154.78 | 3.23 | $500.00 |
| 2015-02-02 | $152.06 | $500.00 | 3.288229781497131 | $500.00 | $153.41 | 6.519 | $991.22 |
| 2015-03-02 | $159.76 | $500.00 | 3.129627937312301 | $500.00 | $155.47 | 9.648 | $1,541.45 |
| 2015-04-01 | $155.72 | $500.00 | 3.210823300045658 | $500.00 | $155.53 | 12.859 | $2,002.47 |
| 2015-05-01 | $159.45 | $500.00 | 3.135832340842397 | $500.00 | $156.30 | 15.995 | $2,550.36 |
| 2015-06-01 | $160.14 | $500.00 | 3.122250468181458 | $500.00 | $156.93 | 19.117 | $3,061.45 |
| 2015-07-01 | $157.85 | $500.00 | 3.167664480978175 | $500.00 | $157.06 | 22.285 | $3,517.56 |
| 2015-08-03 | $159.57 | $500.00 | 3.133411250826437 | $500.00 | $157.37 | 25.418 | $4,056.01 |
| 2015-09-01 | $145.66 | $500.00 | 3.432689086245627 | $500.00 | $155.97 | 28.851 | $4,202.39 |
| 2015-10-01 | $146.95 | $500.00 | 3.402515547794796 | $500.00 | $155.02 | 32.254 | $4,739.66 |
Performance summary
| Total return | +162.83% |
|---|---|
| Sharpe ratio | 0.83 |
| Average buy price (APB) | $269.38 |
| Buy & hold final value | $322,494.96 |
| Buy & hold return | +357.44% |
| DCA vs buy & hold | Buy & hold better |
| Final shares | 261.716 |
| Investments | 141 |
| 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 $70,500 — 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
$500 on the first trading day of each month from 2015-01-02, run to 2026-09-04 on each series in the committed price snapshot.
| Ticker | From | Contributed | Final value | Total return | Annualised | Max drawdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QQQ | 2015-01-02 | $70,500 | $250,901 | 255.9% | 20.3% | 35.1% |
| SPY | 2015-01-02 | $70,500 | $184,405 | 161.6% | 15.5% | 33.7% |
| VOO | 2015-01-02 | $70,500 | $185,298 | 162.8% | 15.6% | 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)
What a fixed monthly contribution actually bought
A contribution plan is not one investment, it is a long series of them, and that changes what the result means. Each month bought a different number of shares at a different price, which is the mechanism people mean when they talk about averaging in: more shares in the cheap months, fewer in the expensive ones, and no decision required in either. The average price paid across the whole run is reported above, next to the price the position ended at, and the gap between those two numbers is the entire story of the plan. Because the contribution is fixed in dollars rather than in shares, the plan spent the same money every month while the position it was building grew, so the newest contributions moved the total by less and less as the years went on. That is worth understanding before reading the annualised return: money added in the final year had a year to work, money added in the first year had the whole decade, and a single annualised figure compresses both into one number. The maximum drawdown reported above is measured on the unit price of the plan rather than on its balance, so a month's contribution never disguises a fall in the market as a gain. VOO tracks the S&P 500, which means this run is a proxy for the large American companies as a group rather than a bet on any one of them, and the period covered included both a very fast crash and a long recovery.
The same money invested all at once
Every page here also reports the lump sum comparison, and it is the honest one: the same total capital, put into the same ETF on the first day of the period, held to the end. That baseline usually beats a contribution plan in a market that spent most of the period rising, because the contribution plan holds cash it has not invested yet, and cash earns nothing. Reading the two numbers side by side is the point. If the lump sum wins, the gap is the price of not having had the money on day one, which is most people's actual situation and not a mistake. If the contribution plan wins, the period contained a fall deep enough and early enough that buying through it beat buying before it. Neither outcome is advice about what to do next, because the ordering depends entirely on which decade the money was invested in.
Questions about this backtest
Does this backtest include dividends?
Yes. The price series is adjusted close, so dividends are treated as reinvested on the day they were paid. A backtest of an index ETF on raw closing prices understates a ten-year horizon noticeably.
Which day of the month does it buy on?
The first trading day of each month. The engine has no ability to pick a better day, which is the point of the exercise.
Other backtests worked out
- Investing 100 dollars a month in VOO since 2015
- Investing 500 dollars a month in QQQ since 2015
- Investing 1000 dollars a month in VOO since 2020
Run your own plan in the Dollar-Cost Averaging Calculator and Backtest