The Rolling Returns chart displays every inflation-adjusted compound return of a specified investing timeframe. Use this to study how average returns vary depending on start year, to find a portfolio appropriate for the timeframe of your goals, and to explore trends that may influence your financial decisions.
Chart
Overview
The Rolling Returns chart calculates the inflation-adjusted CAGR for a specified investing timeframe looking at every start year on record. Drag the slider to adjust the timeframe length. Watching the returns smooth out the longer the timeframe is a nice visual reminder of the importance of patience when evaluating portfolio performance.
Featured Walkthrough
Discussion
Join the conversation
Articles
Insights that reference Rolling Returns
About this chart, and how to link to it
About the Rolling Returns Chart
Rolling Returns answers "how consistent were returns over rolling periods?" It plots one bar per historical start year showing the real (inflation-adjusted) compound annual growth rate over a holding period chosen on the chart — 10 years by default — so the run of bars is every outcome that holding period actually produced, gains and losses alike, from 1970–2025.
This chart is drawn in the browser, so the figures it plots are not in this page’s HTML. Citable numbers for the standard portfolios are server-rendered on the portfolio pages, each with a table covering all 12 home countries, and the nearest chart-specific tables are on the Long Term Returns page.
Standard portfolios: 7Twelve Portfolio (7tw), All Seasons Portfolio (all), Classic 60-40 Portfolio (cla), Coffeehouse Portfolio (cof), Core Four Portfolio (c4), Global Market Portfolio (gm), Golden Butterfly (gb), Golden Ratio Portfolio (gra), Ideal Index Portfolio (iip), Ivy Portfolio (ivy), Larry Portfolio (lar), No-Brainer Portfolio (nob), Permanent Portfolio (pp), Pinwheel Portfolio (pin), Richer Retirement (rr), Sandwich Portfolio (san), Swensen Portfolio (swe), Three-Fund Portfolio (3f), Total Stock Market (tsm), Ultimate Buy & Hold (ult), Weird Portfolio (wrd).
Home countries: Australia (aus), Canada (can), France (fra), Germany (deu), Italy (ita), Japan (jpn), Netherlands (nld), Spain (esp), Sweden (swe), Switzerland (che), United Kingdom (gbr), United States (usa).
To see a specific portfolio and home country version of this chart, link readers to this page with ?pk=PORTFOLIO&home=COUNTRY using the codes listed above (e.g. ?pk=gb&home=aus), or omit ?pk= to study a custom portfolio. The link sets the portfolio and the home country; the holding period is chosen on the chart and is not carried in the URL. More in the Guide for AI Assistants.