Same index as SPY with a lower expense ratio.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
VOO is Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF, launched in September 2010. It tracks the same index as SPY at a lower fee and is widely used for long-term holding. Day to day it moves almost exactly like SPY.
It listed seventeen years after SPY, so the dot-com bust and the financial crisis are not in its history. On VOO alone the deepest fall is the 2020 crash, a drop in the 30% range over about a month. To see the S&P 500's deeper declines, look at SPY, which has the same index back to 1993. It is a good example of how the start of a data series can make the same index look safer.
For split buying, VOO's small daily moves trigger buys rarely and results usually trail buy and hold. It works as a reference for telling whether a smaller drawdown on a leveraged fund came from the strategy or simply from holding more cash. See the regime-dependence section of five backtest traps.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2010-09-09, VOO's worst peak-to-trough fall was -34.3%, from the 2020-02-19 high to the 2020-03-23 low over 23 trading days. It took another 103 trading days (about 0.4 years) to get back above that high, on 2020-08-18. The last close is 2.5% below the all-time high.
A fall of 34.3% needs a 52% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on VOO 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 1.07% 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) | +76.18% | -18.80% | +5.39% | 1194 | 46.6% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +28.82% | -15.98% | +2.38% | 1202 | 84.9% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +65.22% | -23.75% | +4.77% | 1019 | 42.8% |
| Buy and hold | +277.23% | -34.23% | +13.10% | - | - |
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 VOO 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 | +2.95% | -7.37% | +10.86% | -9.10% |
| 2025 | +11.81% | -11.03% | +16.37% | -18.89% |
| 2024 | +8.14% | -4.09% | +23.88% | -8.44% |
| 2023 | +7.46% | -7.37% | +24.52% | -10.29% |
| 2022 | +1.43% | -12.40% | -19.96% | -25.28% |
| 2021 | +11.26% | -3.83% | +28.30% | -5.37% |
| 2020 | +5.37% | -13.84% | +14.73% | -33.83% |
| 2019 | +5.18% | -5.87% | +28.07% | -6.58% |
| 2018 | -11.69% | -17.88% | -7.10% | -20.07% |
| 2017 | +6.50% | -2.61% | +18.29% | -3.02% |
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 VOO's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -20.0% while the strategy returned +1.4%. In its best year, 2021, holding returned +28.3% and the strategy +11.3%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
VOO listed on 2010-09-09, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 1993, but the years before listing are index-based: VOO listed on 2010-09-09. Prices from 1993-01-01 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of S&P 500 Index (^GSPC) minus the fund fee. Treat that range as an estimate. See how the index-based history is built and checked.
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.