When investing, it's important to know how your money will grow over time. The MarketBeat investment calculator shows you how changes in your contribution rate and the average long-term return of a stock index like the S&P 500 can have an effect on your investment. If you try to grow an initial $10,000 investment to $50,000 in ten years, for example, you need to know how to calculate the compounded returns of the S&P 500 Index.
The S&P 500 Index is a benchmark index of the stock market that tracks the performance of the 500 largest companies in the United States. It is widely considered to be a good indicator of how the stock market as a whole is performing. To calculate the compounded returns of the S&P 500 Index, you need to know the current value of the index and the rate of return that it has achieved over the past year.
So, for example, if you invested $10,000 in a stock that is now worth $20,000, the rate of return would be 100%. You would then calculate each security's compound return by multiplying the current value by the rate of return. In this example, the compounded return would be 200%. That means that if you had invested $10,000 in this stock one year ago, your investment would now be worth $20,000.
That's quite a feat in a year the S&P 500 is down 20% and has been brushing with a bear market all year. The same $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 Index would have grown to approximately $12,000, resulting in a compound return of only 20%.
Bolstering your retirement savings is a great use of $10,000. If you are looking for a more conservative investment option, you could consider investing in gold or a diversified portfolio of stock. Additionally, you could invest in an index fund that tracks the performance of a market index like the S&P 500. Jim Osman, founder of research group The Edge, says invest should buy an S&P 500 Index fund or another “good quality index with great diversification, low costs and safety.”
Chart showing compounded investment returns on the S&P 500 growing from $10,000 to $100,000 in 25 years. Data source: Calculator.net. Chart by author.
So, if you invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 in 1995, at the end of 2020 you would have almost $200,000. That’s an average return of 8.7% per year. You probably don't need me to tell you this, but 2022 has been an awful year for Wall Street. The S&P 500, which is viewed as the most important barometer of the stock market, has been down more than 5% since the start of the year.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth investing in the stock market. How quickly an investment doubles depends on the rate of return. To illustrate the point, let's say you put $10,000 into an S&P 500 index fund and the average return over the next 10 years is 8%. That means that your $10,000 investment would turn into just over $20,000 in a decade.
In conclusion, investing in the stock market can be a great way to grow your money over time. If you are investing a lump sum of $10,000, you should consider investing in an index fund that tracks the performance of the S&P 500. By calculating the compounded return of the S&P 500, you can see how your money could grow over time.
