Average Stock Market Return Since 1950: Every Year and Rolling Window

The average stock market return depends on which average you mean. From the end of 1949 to the end of 2025, the S&P 500 price index compounded at 8.2% a year. The simple average of its 76 calendar-year returns is 9.6%, and the median year is 12.4%. Add dividends and the figure rises: the total-return index compounded at 11.4% a year from 1988 to 2025 against 9.0% for price alone over the same years. Subtract inflation and it falls: 4.6% a year in real terms since 1950. We computed every one of these from daily closes, with every calendar year, every decade and every rolling window from one to thirty years below.

Three things about the average that the single number hides. Only 7 of the 76 years since 1950 landed inside 8% to 12%, so an average year almost never happens. One-year holding periods lost money about one time in four, five-year periods about one in six, and no fifteen-year period since 1950 lost money on price alone. And almost every year had a real drawdown on the way: the median year fell 10.4% from its high at some point, and 41 of the 76 fell 10% or more.

• Since 1950, price only: 8.2% a year compounded; average year 9.6%, median year 12.4%; 56 of 76 years positive; best +45.0% (1954), worst -38.5% (2008).
• With dividends, 1988 to 2025: 11.4% a year, against 9.0% for the price index. Dividends turned a 26.7-fold gain into a 59.5-fold gain over those 38 years.
• After inflation: 4.6% a year since 1950 on price (inflation averaged 3.51%); 8.4% a year with dividends from 1988 to 2025.
• Right now: the index is up 11.3% in 2026 through November 11 after a 9.1% drawdown in early November, and the trailing ten years ended 2025 at 12.8% a year on price, 14.8% with dividends.

How we computed it

Price returns use the S&P 500 index daily closes from Yahoo Finance (symbol ^GSPC), which run from December 30, 1927. We start the main study at the end of 1949 so that it covers 76 full calendar years, 1950 through 2025, and we show 1928 onward separately because the index before 1957 is a back-calculated series of fewer stocks, as S&P Dow Jones Indices explains. Total return, which reinvests dividends, uses the S&P 500 Total Return index (^SP500TR on Yahoo), published from January 4, 1988, so dividend figures cover 1988 to 2025. Inflation uses the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, December to December. A calendar-year return is the last close of the year over the last close of the prior year. A rolling window starts on every trading day and ends on the last trading day on or before the same date N years later, which gives 19,087 one-year windows and 11,791 thirty-year windows, not a handful of year-end snapshots. This is history, not a forecast.

Compound return, average year and median year are three different numbers

The 8.2% figure is the compound annual growth rate: what the index actually turned one dollar into, annualized. The 9.6% figure is the arithmetic mean of the 76 yearly returns, and it is always higher than the compound rate when returns vary, because a -38.5% year and a +45.0% year do not cancel. The 12.4% median is higher still, because the distribution has a long left tail: a few deep losses pull the mean down more than the typical year does. When a source says the market returns about 10% a year, it is usually quoting the arithmetic mean of total returns. When a calculator shows what $10,000 became, it is using the compound rate. Over 30 years the difference is large: $10,000 compounding at 8.2% becomes about $107,000, and at 11.4% about $252,000.

The spread is the point. Twenty-two years gained more than 20% and twelve lost more than 10%; only seven landed within two points of the long-run average. Here is the full distribution of the 76 years.

Every decade since 1950, nominal and real

Two decades lost money in real terms. The 1970s compounded at 1.6% a year while inflation ran 7.4%, a real return of -5.4% a year, and the 2000s compounded at -2.7% with the two bear markets of that decade, -5.1% a year real. The 1990s were the best, 15.3% a year nominal and 12.0% real. The 2020s so far, 2020 through 2025, compounded at 13.3% a year despite a -19.4% year in 2022. Whether a decade was good or bad depended on where it started, which is what the rolling windows below measure.

Rolling windows: how often each holding period lost money

A calendar-year table only shows 76 starting points, all on January 1. The chart counts every trading day as a start, so a one-year window beginning in March 2008 is counted as much as one beginning in January.

One-year windows lost money 25.3% of the time, with a worst case of -48.8% (the year to early March 2009) and a best of +74.8% (the year to March 2010). Five-year windows lost money 15.8% of the time, and the worst five-year stretch cost 10.0% a year. At ten years the share of losers falls to 7.3%, with a worst case of -6.2% a year, which is the decade that ended in early 2009. From fifteen years on, no window since 1950 lost money on price alone: the worst fifteen-year result was +0.5% a year and the worst twenty-year result +1.9%. The median thirty-year window returned 7.7% a year, and the whole range of thirty-year outcomes ran from 4.7% to 10.6%, which is how much the starting point can matter even over a working lifetime.

With dividends the picture improves at every horizon. Over 1988 to 2025, the median ten-year total return was 10.4% a year with a worst case of -4.5%, the median twenty-year was 8.6% with a worst case of +3.9%, and the median thirty-year was 10.4% with a worst case of +8.8%. Our count of how often the market goes up by day, week, month and year covers the shorter end of the same question.

What the last 10, 20, 30, 50 and 75 years returned

The last ten years were far above the long-run average: 12.8% a year on price and 14.8% with dividends, 11.3% a year after inflation. The last twenty years, which include the 2008 crash, came in at 8.9% and 11.0%. The last thirty years, which include both the 2000 and 2008 bear markets, 8.4% and 10.4%. Anyone quoting a ten-year average today is quoting a period that started in a strong market and never saw a lost decade.

Dividends are a quarter of the return

From January 1988 to December 2025, the price index compounded at 9.0% a year and multiplied 26.7 times. The total-return index, which reinvests every dividend, compounded at 11.4% a year and multiplied 59.5 times. The 2.3-point gap looks small and more than doubled the ending amount. Any figure for the average market return that comes from a price chart is leaving that out, and most charts are price charts.

The average year does not exist, and the average day explains why

Across the 19,121 trading days from 1950 to 2025, the S&P 500 closed higher on 53.1% of them, and the median day moved 0.46% in either direction. About 52 days a year moved 1% or more and about 11 moved 2% or more. An 8% year is what is left after those days net out, and a handful of them decide the result. Holding every day since 1950 compounded at 8.2% a year; missing the ten best days drops that to 7.05%, missing the best 25 to 5.92%, and missing the best 50 to 4.41%. Missing the ten worst days would have raised it to 9.74% and missing the worst 50 to 12.90%. Missing both the best and the worst 25 lands at 8.76%, close to the full-period figure, because the extremes cluster together.

All ten of the best days since 1950 fell inside a crisis: four in October and November 2008, three in March and April 2020, one in October 1987, one in March 2009 and one on April 9, 2025. Nine of the ten worst days fell in the same episodes. The best and the worst days arrive in the same weeks, which is why exiting after a bad day has usually meant missing a good one.

Every calendar year since 1950, with how far it fell on the way

The right-hand column is something the usual tables leave out: the largest decline from a high within that same year, on closing prices. The median year fell 10.4% from its high at some point, 70 of the 76 years fell at least 5%, 41 fell 10% or more, and 22 of those 41 still finished the year higher. Thirteen years saw a decline of 20% or more, and nine of the years that fell 15% or more still closed up, among them 2020 (a 33.9% drop, a +16.3% finish) and 2025 (an 18.9% drop, a +16.4% finish).

What the average means for a rules-based trader

An annual average is a statement about holding an index for years. The rules in an automated account operate at the scale of the day, where the base rates are the ones in the previous section: a 0.46% median move, a 1% move about once a week, a 2% move about once a month, and the fact that the best and worst days come in clusters. Our members set the numbers that govern that scale themselves. Across our live accounts with auto-trading switched on at the time of writing, the median profit target is 10%, the median stop is 5%, the median trailing stop is 4% and the median confidence floor is 65. Closed automated trades over the last 60 days had a median holding time of about 1.7 hours, most closed the same day they opened, and the trailing stop was the most common exit. Those are the mechanics of a strategy that does not hold through a 20% decline because it was never designed to; the long-run average return belongs to the index, not to any one rule. The settings glossary explains each setting, our risk-reward guide shows how the target and stop combine, and you can set those rules up and watch them on a sample account before connecting a broker.

For anyone holding the index rather than trading it, the rolling tables are the useful part: the share of losing windows falls from one in four at one year to zero at fifteen, dividends add about two points a year, inflation takes about three, and every 10% decline since 1950 and every record high have both been ordinary stops along the way. Our maximum drawdown guide covers what the declines felt like in the middle of them.

Quick answers

What is the average stock market return?

The S&P 500 price index compounded at 8.2% a year from the end of 1949 to the end of 2025; the simple average of its calendar years is 9.6%. With dividends reinvested, the total-return index compounded at 11.4% a year from 1988 to 2025.

What is the average annual return of the S&P 500 over the last 10 years?

For the ten years ending December 31, 2025: 12.8% a year on price and 14.8% a year with dividends, about 11.3% a year after inflation.

What is the S&P 500 average return over 20 and 30 years?

Twenty years ending 2025: 8.9% on price, 11.0% with dividends. Thirty years: 8.4% on price, 10.4% with dividends, about 7.6% real.

Is 10% a year a realistic stock market return?

As a long-run average with dividends reinvested, yes: 11.4% a year from 1988 to 2025 and about 10% a year in the usual longer series. As an expectation for any one year, no: only 7 of the 76 years since 1950 finished within 8% to 12%, and one year in four lost money.

What is the average stock market return adjusted for inflation?

About 4.6% a year on price since 1950, with inflation averaging 3.51%. With dividends, 8.4% a year from 1988 to 2025.

How often does the stock market lose money over 5 or 10 years?

Measured from every trading day since 1950, five-year periods lost money 15.8% of the time and ten-year periods 7.3% of the time on price alone. No fifteen-year period lost money.

Does the S&P 500 average return include dividends?

Only if the source uses the total-return index. The commonly quoted price index does not. From 1988 to 2025 the difference was 9.0% a year without dividends and 11.4% with them.

Historical figures are for information only. They describe what happened, not what will happen, and nothing here is investment advice.