Comparison of market performance of
Total Returns of a few Stocks and Funds

This calculator calculates compounded Total Return growth of spans up to 15 years to compare performance of 60+ popular stocks and funds. Except for Roku and Shopify, the companies here are in the S&P 500. The emphasis is on growth stocks, but the list also includes various additional entries representing other diversified trends and notions. The collection of stocks here is just my whims with no other significance as a group. For stocks Not included here, Morningstar.com shows ten years of these annual Total Return numbers (which for stocks are at the Price vs Fair Value tab, and for funds are at the Performance tab).

Most of the last 15 years have been good to very good market years for the S&P 500. 2008 was a really bad year, but still for 2007-2021, the 15 years S&P 500 Annualized Return (represented here by the VFIAX index fund) was 10.6% (each year), and 356% gain overall in that span. But 2022 has turned very difficult so far, and sorting here by the single year 2022 shows about everything is down very substantially now (S&P 500 drop was down to -23% YTD on 16 May 2022). Market fear moved the Growth stocks further down in this list, far negative for the year. Some Value stocks moved higher in the list (mostly also negative, but maybe not as much). So there are dramatic top and bottom switches in this arbitrary list of stocks, a very different picture than seen in past years. Even the largest strongest best performing top stocks, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Nvidia, Meta (Facebook), and the S&P 500 are seriously negative year-to-date. Comparing the one year 2022 with a span of few of the other years is a sight to see (clicking the two Span buttons shows that). The market will recover of course, but may take awhile longer. But most years are pretty good.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is of course a big worry, but here at home, the painful inflation is another of the big concerns about the current US predicament. The government's massive spending of Trillions is a large inflation factor. And also their self-inflicted policies limiting our own U.S. oil production has also had strong effect increasing inflation. The U.S. oil production was self-sufficient before, but now we must import oil again. Oil affects the price of everything (transportation, plastics, etc), and the doubled oil price has increased U.S. inflation from 1.4% in 2020 to 8.3% in Aug 2022. 2022 is by far the worst inflation in 41 years. The US mid-term election is November 8, 2022.

Current bond fund performance examples:

Link	Name of Vanguard fund	Current SEC Yield 9/20	1 year Return 8/31	Bond Duration 8/31
VMFXX	Federal Money Market	2.49%	0.48%	No loss
VFSUX	Short Term Bond	4.28%	-6.31%	2.7 years
VSCSX	Short-Term Corporate Bond Index	4.43%	-6.24%	2.8 years
VFIDX	Intermediate Term Bonds	4.81%	-13.54%	6.3 years
VBLAX	Long Term Bond Index	4.56%	-23.09%	14.8 years

Investing in bonds is very different than stocks. Bond values change with changing interest rates, which can be as volatile as stocks. Bottom line, due to the inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve is increasing interest rates now, and will continue to do so, so resale value of existing bonds are dropping. There is more to it, see description at Things you need to know about investing in bonds. Bonds can be volatile.