Ticker League

Investment calculator — methodology

How TickerLeague computes hypothetical returns in the “what if you invested” calculator, how CAGR is annualized, and how the Historical extremes table derives max profit, max drawdown and return since inception.

What this page covers

Every company, index, cryptocurrency, foreign-exchange pair and commodity on TickerLeague has a what-if-invested page: enter an amount and a start date, and we show what the position would be worth today, the profit or loss, the total return and the annualized return. Underneath it sits a Historical extremes table — the best round-trip trade, the worst drawdown, and the return from the first close on file.

The arithmetic is identical for every instrument. What differs is the price series the arithmetic reads, and therefore what the resulting number means. That difference is documented in which price series each instrument uses below, and is restated on each instrument page.

Everything here is a hindsight statistic computed on historical closes. None of it is a forecast, and none of it is investment advice.

How the calculator works

The calculator models a single buy-and-hold position: the full amount is invested at one closing price and never touched again. Two lines of arithmetic:

units = amount ÷ closestart date

current value = units × closelatest date

Profit or loss is current value − amount, and total return is that divided by the amount. Fractional units are allowed — we do not round down to whole shares, coins or contracts, because the point of the tool is the return, not the settlement mechanics of a real broker.

If the start date you pick is not a trading day (a weekend, a market holiday, or a gap in the instrument's history), the calculator uses the closest available close at or before that date. The latest close is whatever end-of-day bar last landed in our database.

Total return vs annualized return (CAGR)

Total return is the whole-period change: a position that doubled shows +100%, whether it took nine months or thirty years. It answers "how much did I make," and it is not comparable across holding periods.

CAGR — compound annual growth rate — is the constant yearly rate that would have produced the same ending value over the same number of years. It is the number to use when comparing two positions held for different lengths of time.

CAGR = (current value ÷ amount)(1 ÷ years) − 1

where years is the number of whole calendar days between the two closes, divided by 365. We display CAGR only when the holding period is at least 365 days; below that the tile reads N/A. Annualizing a three-month move produces a number that looks authoritative and means nothing — a 20% quarter is not a 107% year.

CAGR is a smoothed average, not a description of the path. A position that returned +80%, −60% and +150% in three consecutive years has the same CAGR as one that returned the same amount in a straight line. For the shape of the path, see Historical extremes.

Which price series each instrument uses

The formula above measures the change between two closes. What that change represents depends on the series we read — and on the economics of the instrument itself.

  • Stocks and ETFs — total return. Prices are stored split- and dividend-adjusted. Cash dividends are treated as reinvested in additional shares on the ex-date, and splits are normalized retroactively across the whole history. So the calculator's answer for a dividend payer is the return of a buy-and-hold position that reinvested every dividend, not the price change alone.
  • Indices — price return. The series is the index level as it was quoted. It captures the price change of the constituents but not the dividends they paid. The S&P 500 (SPX) yields roughly 1.5% a year in dividends; that yield is absent from any SPX number on this site. For a total-return figure, look up the total-return version of the same index (for the S&P 500, ticker SP500TR).
  • Cryptocurrencies — spot price return. The change in the spot price of the coin or token. Staking rewards, lending interest and other on-chain yields are not included.
  • Foreign exchange — spot exchange-rate return. The change in the spot rate of the pair. It excludes the interest-rate differential between the two currencies — a real EURUSD position accrues or pays carry based on the gap in policy rates, and that effect is absent here.
  • Commodities — spot price return. The change in the spot price of the underlying physical commodity. It excludes futures roll yield (positive in backwardation, negative in contango) and the cost of holding the physical good (storage, insurance, financing). A commodity held through futures or an ETF can return materially less than the spot figure shown here.

Historical extremes

Four benchmark statistics, each computed across the instrument's entire price history on file. All four are identified after the fact. No investor could have known the dates in advance, and the numbers are not achievable strategies.

  • Max profit — the single buy-and-sell pair that would have produced the largest percentage gain, subject to the buy preceding the sell. Scanned across every close in the history, not just the all-time low and all-time high (buying the ATL and selling the ATH is impossible when the low came after the high).
  • Max drawdown — the largest percentage decline from a prior peak to a subsequent trough, before any recovery. Peak and Trough are the dates and prices where that decline starts and ends. It measures the worst paper loss a holder would have lived through; it becomes a realized loss only if the position was sold at the trough. Drawdown is a mark-to-market risk statistic, not a return.
  • Return since the first close — total return from the earliest close on file to the latest one. Labeled "since IPO" for stocks and "since inception" for indices. For instruments whose history predates our data window, this is the return since our first observation, not since the instrument actually began trading.
  • All-time high and all-time low — the highest and lowest closes on file, with their dates. Based on closing prices, so an intraday spike that closed lower will not appear.

Dollar amounts in the extremes table

The extremes table reuses whatever investment amount is entered in the calculator above it (default $1,000). The Start price and End price columns show the actual closing prices for each scenario; the rightmost column applies that scenario's percent return to your amount to produce the resulting balance. Change the amount in the calculator and the table recalculates — the percentages never change, only the dollars.

The scenarios are independent of each other and of the start date in the calculator. Max profit is not "what you would have made starting from your date" — it is the best round-trip anywhere in the history, priced in your chosen amount.

Data sources and freshness

  • End-of-day price bars are sourced daily from a third-party market data provider, covering the instrument's primary listing.
  • Stocks and ETFs read the split- and dividend-adjusted history; indices, crypto, FX and commodities read the unadjusted history — the value as it was quoted that day.
  • The calculator and the Historical extremes table draw from the same series for a given instrument, so the two always agree.
  • Prices refresh after each trading day's close. Extremes are recomputed as new closes arrive, which means a new all-time high or a deeper drawdown can change these numbers.

Known limits

  • Hindsight, not strategy. Max profit and max drawdown are located by scanning a price history that already happened. Presenting them as achievable returns would be dishonest; they exist to bound the range of what the instrument has done.
  • Lump sum, not contributions. The calculator invests the whole amount on one day. It does not model dollar-cost averaging, additional purchases, or withdrawals.
  • No costs, no taxes. Returns are gross of spreads, commissions, custody and management fees, and any tax on dividends or capital gains. Real after-tax, after-fee returns are lower — sometimes substantially so over multi-decade windows.
  • Survivorship. These pages exist only for instruments that trade today and have a continuous price record. Delisted stocks, discontinued indices and dead tokens are not represented, which biases any casual comparison upward.
  • Index dividends, FX carry, commodity roll yield. See which price series each instrument uses. These structural components of total return are missing from the numbers shown for indices, FX pairs and commodities.
  • Closing prices only. Every figure is derived from end-of-day closes. Intraday highs and lows never enter the calculation.

Want to see this in action? Browse companies and open the "What If Invested" tile on any ticker, or jump straight to S&P 500: what if you had invested.