Wondering about better stock picks with better earnings? Here are the directly comparable current and past results for many of them. You can sort the ticker performances in any one year, or in spans to up to the past ten years of history. You can also easily add other tickers of your choice.
This page is Not investing advice. It's only a comparison of the past and current performance of a few stocks and funds. I am certainly NOT a registered investment advisor and readers should do their own due diligence before investing in any stock. I am not responsible for the investment decisions made by individuals.
The standard market advice is always "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Things can sometimes suddenly change (and is called "market risk"), and you should realize that there can be greater risk in the volatile hot high flier stocks which can be hot today and lost tomorrow. Most funds will not consider them for that reason. The market goes up and down every day, and one risk (at least short term) is buying after it is at peak price. After it has gone low is a permanent loss if sold then, but its low price may make it be considered a great buy, which may well come back up longer term (or may not). Knowing the companies situation and actual possibilities are important to consider. But still, depending on the company's good health, the low dips down are often considered cheap buying opportunities. I'm a believer that actual results certainly do show realistic possibilities, but which has also cost me big a few times. And there is this quote dating from 1605: Don't put all your eggs in one basket, meaning diversification (investing in several good companies in different mixed industries) is the standard important advice (so that one companies sudden troubles won't kill the whole thing). See more about the market in general.
This calculator (below) compares Morningstar's calendar years of Total Return % gain results (which includes reinvested dividends and compounded price gains) of current YTD and up to 10 year spans of performance of over 160+ tickers (popular stocks and a few more funds, in the US market). It's the record of what has actually happened in the market (see the Morningstar Total Return definitions). Total Return % does NOT include accounting for any taxes due. The calculator provides time spans for comparing their actual results, including the current year YTD. Also shows the Annualized Return % for the selected time spans (but annualized cannot include the current incomplete YTD).
Included here are almost all of the top 100 S&P 500 companies, and a few other interestsing ones, which includes all of the Dow Jones Industrial Index 30, and also a few funds of mixed persuasion.
In this calculator,
- You can sort and compare performance of all these tickers in any one year, or in your selected span of years within 2015-2025. However Annualized Return can only include whole years, so Annualized cannot be computed if the incomplete current year is included (and is also not shown for any one complete single year span, which is same as the gain then).
- Options 1, 2 and 3 are just the colors for all the table data cells. Option 2 represents actual annual gains. Option 3 colors highlight extreme values exceeding the specified limits, leaving the lesser values uncolored. Meaning that 3 with ± limits of +0 and -0 (no exclusion, all cells are colored) which is then the same colors as option 2.
- Option 4 can compare all years of all tickers to the years of any other one ticker in the chart. The Delta Δ symbol is a math symbol used to mean "difference".
- Option 5 shows the Summary and Annualized Total Return of the Span for each tickers (except again, excluding the incomplete year 2025 YTD). If for only one single complete year, Annualized is then just the same as the gain, so is not shown again. But it is compounded for multiple years.
- Option 6 makes it very easy to add a few tickers of your own choice of stocks or funds to the chart on this page (retained until the page is reloaded) to see the performance comparisons. Option 6 provides easy Copy/Paste of the Morningstar Total Return % data. Just drag the mouse across the numbers on that Morningstar data line (2015 to 2025 YTD) to highlight and then Copy the Total Return % numbers, and then directly Paste into Option 6 (for each additional new ticker of interest), and repeat for more tickers as desired. Copy all years, and any blank years (shown with a dash) can be copied or not, but the safest thing is copy them and let the program remove them. The last year in the string added will be placed as being 2025. Also another page here has a calculator #3 that will compute the same Copy/Paste of the Morningstar Total Return % numbers (compounded then). On screens wide enough, Morningstar shows these past ten years (plus the current YTD) of these annual Total Return numbers (which for stocks are at the Price vs Fair Value tab, or for funds are at the Performance tab). The description of Morningstar Total Return % includes price gains, reinvested dividends and compounding.
Cell phone screen limitations: The ticker links below go to their correct Morningstar pages (the source of this data). However the year end Total Return % feature (showing 11 years, 2015-YTD) is pretty wide, but is apparently too wide to show at Morningstar on my narrow iPhone screens. That header is shown below their graph there, but not the wide data. It disappears if the browser window is too small. But Morningstar also has a Trailing Returns tab that does show the past 1, 5, 10, 15 years return from current date (which is Not the year end data that this program assumes).
A Browser Quirk: This is about a warning that I see in Chrome. When clicking an exit link here, this warning says your form data may not be saved if you leave. This page does offer many links to Morningstar for these tickers and the data source. It's a browser issue and is NOT Morningstar's fault. You'll see the same warning on other sites offering links away from data entered in a form.
The situation is if clicking an exit link on this page (or others that will show the same warning Reload or Cancel?) which then when returning shows the beginning initial page again (instead of the previous last page), but does not reload the page to reset your changed options, so does not show the result those options should show, which causes a very confusing mismatch between the data shown and what the options should show again. But that is done in the browser, not by the page which does not know if you selected Reload or Cancel, so cannot know to reset.. However there are exceptions and my iPhones and also now Firefox 127 appear to recover OK and instead correctly just reshow the previous page.
If you see this problem, there is a way to work around it:
At return, you can click this page's Click Here button (or any other option button that causes a refreshed view), and it redraws the view to restore the selected options. That part is simple, except this will NOT retain any added tickers.
Or to exit but still also retain any added tickers, exit with a Right Click on the exit link and choose either a New Tab or a New Window, which preserves this page's tab. It won't ask Reload or Cancel then. That does not open the new tab until you click it. Or you can instead just click on another existing tab. You can return here by clicking THIS tab which remains unaffected, until a reload of it.
Otherwise, you can select Cancel to instead stay here, then nothing changes.
This seems quite interesting. Stock ticker XOVR (as of Dec 9 2024) has added
Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company to its ETF. SpaceX (includes StarLink)
is a private stock, but now is available this way for public buyers. The fund includes 31 other companies which are public stocks, including three of the Magnificent 7. SpaceX is its top holding currently with $20 Million and is about 10% of this fund. My understanding is that many private stocks only report performance quarterly (Not daily), but I don't know details.
Morningstar speaking about SpaceX success: "As of 17 December 2024, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 425 times, with 422 full mission successes, three failures, and one partial failure." SpaceX even safely recovered the four astronauts that were stranded on the International Space Station for 8 months instead of 8 days.
Reusable rockets (and private corporations as opposed to governments) greatly reduce expense, and a recent SpaceX rocket even landed itself BACK ONTO ITS OWN LAUNCH TOWER. This is the future, and SpaceX should be a great investment. See this XOVR news release. The ETF is here, and more up to date is XOVR at Morningstar.
The values in these tables are NOT the share prices in dollars. Instead All numbers are Total Return % (percent gain for the years and the compounded year span). The Gain is then comparable with the others.
The data years are the ticker's Morningstar Total Return percentage at each year, which includes both price gain and any dividends reinvested in that period. Not reinvesting dividends is very costly long term, with much less long term compounding (See more. See the compounding math.) If you don't find your brokerage's way to specify reinvesting stock dividends, then see this (ETF may be excluded from reinvesting dividends, because ETF trades in shares, not dollars).
Morningstar shows Total Return % in two ways. The individual year end results (2021, 2022, 2023, etc) used here are the Total Return of each year as of each year end (from 12/31 to 12/31) so the current year is as yet incomplete). But the Morningstar Trailing Returns of the 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15 year periods are the Annualized Returns of the span duration, but of years back from the current date, instead of from year end values. Both are 12 month results, but the one year date difference will not be the exact same value as the year end YTD values shown here. However the YTD value shown is correct for the current year so far.
The Span is the compounded Total Return % for the selected year span (span years indicated with bold headers). There is 11 years of data. Showing the five early years 2015-2019 will need a screen wider than many cell phones, but they need not be shown to include them in a Span.
The Span calculations do not change if clicking to sort on Ticker or Name columns.
The Header column color legend:
Not in Span Columns Not included in current Span.
Span The Span years currently selected (compounded result)
Sort The Sorted column (brighter).
The Ticker column color legend:
S&P 500 Tickers are companies in the S&P 500 Index (Almost all of the top 100). The Bold names are the S&P 500 Top 10 and the S&P 500 Index. The S&P 500 Index is represented by the Vanguard VFIAX fund (with fund fee of 0.04%). There are many S&P 500 Index funds, all trying to mimic the performance of the index, so their results are pretty much the same except for the varying fund fees. If interested in one of these funds, I suggest avoiding those with higher fees. The fee may seem a tiny number, but compounded long term (20 or 30 years), it becomes a very large number lost.
Not S&P 500 Tickers are Companies NOT in the S&P 500.
Funds Tickers are funds consisting of many companies. Fund names starting with a "V " are Vanguard funds and those with "Amer. Cent. " are American Century funds. Mutual fund tickers end with "X", but some ETF and company tickers also end with X, but Not with same meaning.
ETF ETF funds. ETF trade as whole shares during market hours (like stocks). But mutual funds trade as dollars, only after the next market close (typically including fractional shares). Any dividend reinvestment or IRA RMD are in dollars, possibly making ETF fractions difficult for brokerages.
Option 6 Tickers were added by Option 6.
The Data color legend:
Options 2 and 4 divide shades of red and green annual colors at ± 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% gain. Option 3 highlights extremes by showing the color only if gain exceeds the specified limits.
Warning A warning in the Compounded data columns.
A few of these tickers are newer with no data before their ticker existed. Those early empty cells are ignored, with no effect on the computing. Except if the a blank year is in the span, the last two columns (Span Gain and Annualized) have an orange background which warns that some of the first span years are missing data which is a shorter time span. The numbers are accurate for the existing years, but the orange data background result is a WARNING that it is NOT comparable to the ranking of the others due to the fewer years in its time period. The overall gains are in sorted order and accurate for the shorter span, but their Annualized values will not be in sorted order.
Annualized Return (Gain) is the meaningful way to compare long term stock performance numbers. It's useful and important because stock years have varied performance, some years are up big, some years less, or even some years may be negative, and then those results are compounded by the following years. An AVERAGE GAIN is not useful, as it does not include compounding. The actual real market gain performance over several years is not so obvious. We can see the overall dollar gain that was achieved, which is good to know, but of course that depends on the number of years, and which years. The Annualized Gain is the number to compare.
To know an annualized rate of gain that can be compared meaningfully, Annualized Return computes the Fixed Rate that would give the SAME compounded gain in the same time, the exact same result, but AS IF IT HAD BEEN THAT FIXED ANNUAL RATE every year. The market didn't happen that way, but Annualized is still exactly the same gain dollars and time result, and is the valid logical and consistent way to compare the variable long term market performance of years of various gains. Annualized rate is comprehensibly comparable to other stocks if for the same time frame.
Annualized Return is only meaningful for Whole years, so MUST NOT be computed if the data span includes an incomplete year (like the current year). Including incomplete years cannot be correct because it would compute a future that is not known. To see Annualized Return for your selected span here, remove 2025 from the year span. Or see Option 5 with a multiple year span (it isolates 2025). Annualized Return for a span of one year is the same number as the one year Gain, but is shown anyway. The current year does show its current YTD Gain, however the future gain of the incomplete current year is not known, and will change a little every market day, Any Annualized gain of any span including the current year cannot be shown.
If the span includes blank early years, the Gain column is sorted correctly, and the Annualized sort ORDER is in the Same ORDER (Not the same Value, but same sort ORDER) following the Gain column, with a orange warning on these cells indicates its result is of different time periods (if missing early years). The significance of the orange cell warnings is that they are not directly comparable to the others then. The significance of the Annualized numbers is for the span of fewer actual whole years. (See a detailed description of Annualized Return.)
Most of the last 10 years have been generally good to very good market years for the S&P 500. However this is currently a time of extreme political and economic problems, and 2022 was seriously negative, especially for growth stocks and funds. The S&P 500 was down -25% at the bottom on 12 October 2022 and then -18% at year end. Many of the major growth stocks were still down 50% to 80% at 2022 year end.
2023 was a little different. Gains of many good companies have sunk even more negative this year so far. But in stark contrast, several of the big growth stocks are an extreme reversal from 2022 (moving from bottom of the list in 2022 to the top in 2023). It's worth seeing a sort on only 2023. Do realize the top growth stocks are volatile with greater risk, so it's also worth seeing the one year sort of 2022. The politics and economy will be an issue for the market until the next US federal election in November. But the market has always recovered, and the results will look much better after recovery. 2024 has been good, and 2025 should be great.
The future is looking bright after the election.
Other market pages and calculators:
S&P 500 50 year gain history calculator, concerned with Withdrawal Depletion
Descriptions of S&P 500, the 4% Rule, Basics of Markets and Dividends
Math of Compounding and Annualized Return, and calculators
S&P 500 daily Action, and Count of annual S&P 500 Record Highs
Dividends are in fact a forced withdrawal which reduces your investment's price, value and future gains. But you can put it back by Reinvesting Dividends, which restores the previous investment value, and the dividend becomes Free additional new shares, greatly increasing long term gain compounding. Either way, there is no new income on that first dividend day. You will owe tax on the gains in that withdrawal either way.
A few important market facts to know about Bonds
Copyright © 2021-2025 by Wayne Fulton - All rights are reserved.
