YTD Return
+8.40%
Above the historical YTD average of ~6.5% through May.
S&P 500 Index
U.S. Daily Market Close
0
+18 vs. yesterday (+0.31%)
Past 12 months
5,150 – 5,882
YTD+8.40%
1-Year+14.20%
5-Year+78.5%
The S&P 500 is up 8.40% YTD and just 12 points below its all-time high. A $10,000 investment 10 years ago is worth ~$28,720 today excluding dividends — about $33,400 with dividends reinvested.
Historical trend
Daily market close.
Source: FRED · SP500
The long view: since 1957
Seventy years of U.S. stocks. Every drawdown eventually recovered.
All-Time High 5,882 · May 10, 2026
2009 Low 677 · March 9, 2009
Today 5,870
How today stacks up
1-Year Return
+14.20%
In line with the long-run S&P avg (10–11%).
5-Year Return
+78.5%
12.3% annualized — above the historical 10% average.
10-Year Return
+187%
11.2% annualized. Strong by historical standards.
Use this index
Tools that plug into 5,870.
About the S&P 500 Index
The S&P 500 is the most-watched stock market index in the world. It tracks the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies, weighted by their market capitalization. When financial news says "the market was up today," they almost always mean the S&P 500. It's the benchmark that nearly every U.S. retirement account, 401(k), and index fund either tracks directly or measures itself against. About $15 trillion in assets is benchmarked to or invested in S&P 500 index funds.
Why this index — not the Dow — is the real benchmark
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (30 stocks, price-weighted) is older and more famous, but the S&P 500 is what professional investors actually watch. With 500 companies covering ~80% of the U.S. equity market and market-cap weighting, it's a much better representation of "how American stocks are doing." Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta together make up about a third of the index — meaning the S&P 500 is increasingly a story about big tech.
Reading this chart
Long-term returns are the story. From 1957 to today the S&P 500 has returned roughly 10–11% annualized including dividends, dramatically outpacing inflation. But the path is brutal: the 1973–74 bear market (−48%), the 2000–02 dot-com crash (−49%), the 2007–09 financial crisis (−57%), the 2020 COVID panic (−34% in five weeks), and the 2022 inflation drawdown (−25%). Every one of those drops eventually fully recovered and made new highs — which is the central case for "time in the market beats timing the market." Today's level sits just below the all-time high set on May 10, 2026.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
The S&P 500 has 500 companies vs the Dow's 30. The S&P weights by market cap; the Dow weights by share price (which makes Boeing more important than Apple, despite Apple being 100x larger). Pros use the S&P; the public watches the Dow.
The headline index price you see is the "price return" index — it does not include dividends. The "total return" version (S&P 500 TR) does include reinvested dividends and runs about 1.5% higher per year. Most index funds track the total return.
YTD = Year-to-Date. The S&P 500's YTD return is the percentage change from January 1 of the current year to today. Useful for "how is the market doing this year" but heavily date-dependent.
S&P Dow Jones Indices (the index provider) reviews the composition quarterly. Stocks are added/removed based on market cap, profitability, and trading volume criteria. About 20–25 changes happen per year — meaning the "500" you\'re invested in is constantly evolving.
We can\'t give investment advice, but the historical case is well-documented: a low-cost S&P 500 index fund has outperformed roughly 90% of actively managed U.S. equity funds over rolling 20-year windows. Vanguard\'s VOO and Schwab\'s SWPPX are two of the cheapest options at 0.03% expense ratio.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · SP500 and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.