What would your investment be worth today?
Pick a stock, a date in the past and an amount — we'll show you on real Yahoo-Finance data what it would have grown to, including comparison vs. the S&P 500.
Value over time
Source: Yahoo Finance (yfinance), split- and dividend-adjusted closing prices. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
What does this calculator do?
The „What If…“ calculator shows you, on real Yahoo-Finance data, what your investment would have grown to if you had invested in a specific stock, ETF, or cryptocurrency on a specific date. You pick a ticker, a date, and an amount — we deliver today’s value, the total return, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the biggest drawdown during the period, and a head-to-head comparison vs. the S&P 500. Over 100 pre-selected names are available in the dropdown; any other Yahoo-Finance ticker (e.g. ASML.AS, VWCE.DE, BTC-USD) can be entered manually.
How is the performance calculated?
We use monthly, split- and dividend-adjusted closing prices („adjusted close“ with auto_adjust=True). From your investment amount and the price at the first available month after your chosen date we compute the number of shares acquired. Those shares multiplied by the latest closing price give today’s value. Because the data is dividend-adjusted, paid and re-invested dividends are automatically included — you see the total-return performance a buy-and-hold-with-DRIP investor would have experienced.
What is CAGR and why does it matter more than total return?
Total return only tells you how much your investment gained or lost across the entire window. That often sounds impressive — „+2,500%“ — but obscures whether that was achieved over 5 years or 30. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) — the annualized return — normalizes for time. It says: „On average this investment delivered X percent per year, with compounding.“ A 25% CAGR over 30 years is the Apple story; an 8% CAGR over 30 years is the broad market. When comparing two investments, CAGR is always the fairer metric.
What does Maximum Drawdown mean?
Maximum drawdown is the largest temporary peak-to-trough loss your investment suffered. Even the best-performing stocks in history had brutal drawdowns: Apple lost over 50% in 2008, Amazon shed roughly 95% after the dot-com bust. Drawdown is the stress test for your strategy — if you had sold at the low, you wouldn’t have captured the rebound. Retail investors who cannot stomach a 50% drawdown should set their equity allocation accordingly, long before the next crisis hits.
S&P 500 comparison
The S&P 500 is the benchmark every active strategy is measured against. Over the last 30 years it has delivered roughly 10% CAGR (USD, dividend-adjusted). If your favorite single stock didn’t beat it convincingly across most rolling windows — and only a handful of stocks did — you would have achieved the same outcome with a plain S&P 500 ETF (SPY, VOO) or a global tracker like a low-cost MSCI World ETF, with far lower single-stock risk.
Disclaimer
Past performance is not indicative of future returns. This calculator is an educational tool, not investment advice. Taxes (capital gains tax in your jurisdiction), broker fees, and FX effects (USD/EUR) are not considered. Crypto data follows Yahoo’s tracker prices, which may differ from a specific exchange’s spot price. Investments in stocks, crypto, and ETFs carry the risk of total loss.