Holds 500 US large caps. The oldest US-listed ETF.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
SPY is State Street's S&P 500 fund, launched in January 1993 and the oldest ETF in the US. It is still among the most heavily traded ETFs, and its history is the reason this site's prices start in 1993.
Its thirty-plus years include the dot-com bust (2000–2002), the financial crisis (2007–2009), the 2020 crash and the 2022 hiking cycle. The deepest fall came in the financial crisis, and regaining that high took several years. That long record is the base for reconstructing leveraged funds before they existed.
Split buying on SPY usually keeps drawdowns small but trails buy and hold by a wide margin, because much of the seed stays in cash. Treat it as a reference point for comparing return with drawdown. For why drawdown matters, see maximum drawdown; for reading annualised returns, see CAGR vs total return.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 1993-01-29, SPY's worst peak-to-trough fall was -56.5%, from the 2007-10-09 high to the 2009-03-09 low over 355 trading days. It took another 1011 trading days (about 4.0 years) to get back above that high, on 2013-03-14. The last close is 2.5% below the all-time high.
A fall of 56.5% needs a 130% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on SPY has to be judged on whether you could have held it through a stretch like this. Why drawdown comes before return.
The standard deviation of daily returns is 1.17% over the whole history
and 0.80% over the last year. By the rough rule
days ≈ (target ÷ daily volatility)², a 1.5% take-profit target needs about
3.5 trading days at the recent pace.
Where the rule comes from.
Three preset strategies run over 2016-01-04 to 2026-10-23 with a $10,000 seed and 0.1% fees, alongside simply holding the same instrument.
| Strategy | Return | Max drawdown | CAGR | Trades | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Standard, base rules (no defence signal) | +75.73% | -18.03% | +5.37% | 1194 | 46.0% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +31.75% | -14.69% | +2.59% | 1203 | 84.6% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +66.99% | -21.94% | +4.87% | 1026 | 42.4% |
| Buy and hold | +276.20% | -34.02% | +13.08% | - | - |
Read the drawdown column before the return column. Split buying leaves much of the seed in cash, which is the main reason its drawdown is smaller — treat it as lower exposure rather than protection.
Test SPY with your own settings →The standard (diamond) preset, one calendar year at a time. A strategy worth using should have good years and bad years mixed — if one year made everything, that was the year, not the rules.
| Year | Strategy | Strategy MDD | Buy and hold | B&H MDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | +1.76% | -7.31% | +10.93% | -9.06% |
| 2025 | +13.59% | -10.73% | +16.32% | -18.91% |
| 2024 | +7.63% | -3.92% | +23.60% | -8.36% |
| 2023 | +8.35% | -6.91% | +24.34% | -10.21% |
| 2022 | +0.23% | -12.53% | -19.95% | -25.31% |
| 2021 | +10.94% | -4.20% | +28.44% | -5.40% |
| 2020 | +4.45% | -13.72% | +14.73% | -33.84% |
| 2019 | +4.42% | -5.78% | +28.09% | -6.56% |
| 2018 | -10.57% | -16.67% | -7.17% | -20.09% |
| 2017 | +5.61% | -2.61% | +18.10% | -3.01% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 1 and trailed it in 9. It lost money in 1 year; buy and hold lost in 2. In SPY's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -19.9% while the strategy returned +0.2%. In its best year, 2021, holding returned +28.4% and the strategy +10.9%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
SPY listed in 1993-01. Nothing before that date exists, so any claim about how it would have behaved in an earlier crisis is guesswork. For older periods, test a 1x index ETF instead.
Whole shares only. If a tranche is allocated less than one share's price, it buys nothing. Raise the seed or lower the number of tranches.
The Today's Orders page computes the next session's buy limit and each tranche's sell target from your start date. It is a calculation, not advice, and no orders are placed.