Showing daily action of the 2018-2022 S&P 500, adding more detail of market action, which seems pretty interesting to me. The S&P 500 is a weighted index representing the total capitalization value of the 500 largest U.S. companies. Then all of the S&P 500 Index mutual funds track it with similar percentage numbers (less fund fees).   ( A good S&P 500 graph )

The market goes up and down every day. So don't sweat the small stuff, think long term, but this table does show the past S&P 500 action. It can be volatile and has some bad times, which are "lost time" for earnings, but it always recovers, and overall performance is good and certainly worthwhile.

• 2017 closed up 19.42%.
• 2018 was Not a good year. December 24 was down 20%, with the year ending still down at -6.24% (if not including the +2.09% dividend). But it recovered (7 months between the adjacent record highs). 19 record highs in 2018.
• 2019 had a slow start (recovering from end of 2018), but then 35 record highs with 28.88% year end gain.
• 2020 was the March pandemic crash (-34%). But it recovered (6 months between the adjacent record highs), not bad at all. 33 record highs and 16.25% year end gain.
• 2021 was a great year, 70 record highs and 26.89% year end gain.

  Year	S&P 500 Record Highs
  2018	19
  2019	35
  2020	33
  2021	70
  2022	1
  2023

• 2022 problems are the oil, the painful inflation (at a 40 year high), the open border and the crime increase are worries piling up now. This page was intended to track all of the S&P 500 record highs, but so far, the S&P 500 had only one new record high on the first market day of the year, and is well down now. But it has always recovered. This time may be slower, but times will get good again.
• 2023 is suddenly a different story, young and volatile ups and downs, but bigger ups, and so far hopefully suggesting maybe the start of the recovery. Conditions may make full recovery be slow, but at first glance, sure is looking better.

An extra not needed below, but here is another calculator to check other values:

Compute Compounded Gain and Annualized return

Percentage gain =

New value - Old value
Old value

× 100

New value from Old over years

Any units (like distance or weight or time, or Dollars or Euros).
But gain need Not be money.
Years can be blank if Annualized Return is not needed.
Any $ or , format keys are optional, and are ignored.

In this first calculator, Annualized Return includes the long term compounding of several years, and is a hypothetical number computed to be AS IF the SAME final gain result instead resulted from a Fixed equal gain, same every year (like a bank). This Annualized gain rate purpose allows meaningful comparisons, and it computes the fixed gain rate that would match the same market compounded result. (The initial default case indicates that 1.116234¹⁰ = 3.000x value, from 1x value.) It hides any volatility during the years, computing a smooth path that would give the same result in the same time.

See annual S&P Total Return detail in a 50 year S&P 500 Calculator.
See 10 years of 90+ individual stock and fund histories compared (Total Return, including dividends).

The gains in this next table are from daily S&P 500 closing values. These are prices, so dividends are not included (but any Total Return data would include all gains).

Table Color Legend: