The stock market can feel risky, especially when headlines focus on crashes and bear markets. But history shows that time changes the equation.
Using 50 years of S&P 500 total returns, we found that over a single year, investors lost money nearly 1 in 5 times. But as the holding period increased, the odds of losing money dropped dramatically. In fact, no 15-year period since 1975 ended with investors losing money.
The reason is simple: Short-term market movements can be unpredictable. But over longer periods, the market has historically had time to recover from downturns and reward patient investors.
To find out how much holding time matters, we analyzed every possible investment period using S&P 500 total returns from 1975 through 2025, including reinvested dividends. Rather than looking only at fixed decades, we tested every rolling period to see how often investors actually lost money over different holding periods.
For example, a 10-year investment starting in 1975 ran through 1984. Starting in 1976, it ran through 1985. And so on, giving us 42 different 10-year periods to analyze.
Here’s how often each holding period ended in a loss:
Ten years in the market succeeded 95% of the time. The two exceptions both involved investors who bought near the peak of the late-1990s stock market bubble and then experienced both the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis within the same decade.
Go one step further out, and the exceptions disappear. No 15-year, 20-year or 30-year period in the past half century resulted in a loss.
The Short Term Is Where the Risk Lives
The short end of the table is where the danger lives. Over three years, roughly 1 in 8 starting periods lost money, and the losses could be severe.
The worst three-year stretch, from 2000 through 2002, lost 14.47% per year on average. A $10,000 investment during that period would have fallen to about $6,257.
Someone who invested money they needed soon — such as next year’s tuition payment or a home down payment — could have been forced to sell after losing more than a third of their money.
But avoiding losses is only part of the story. The longer you stay invested, the market doesn’t just become more likely to make money — it also becomes dramatically more predictable.
Market Outcomes Become Less Volatile the Longer You Hold
The table below shows the best and worst outcomes for every holding period, expressed as the average return per year.
For example, we tested 49 different three-year periods. The worst period averaged a loss of 14.47% per year for three years, while the best averaged a gain of 30.85% per year.
The worst 15-year period we tested still averaged a 4.19% annual gain, while the best averaged an 18.80% annual gain.
Two things happen as the holding period grows.
First, the worst-case scenario improves dramatically. A devastating one-year loss eventually becomes a positive annual return over longer periods.
Second, the difference between the best and worst outcomes narrows. By the 30-year mark, covering events like the 1987 stock market crash, the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple bear markets, the difference between the luckiest and unluckiest investors was about four percentage points per year.
If percentages per year still feel abstract, here’s what those worst-case returns did to actual money.
Take $10,000 and give it the worst possible starting year for each holding period:
The worst 15-year stretch (2000 through 2014) turned $10,000 into $18,518.
The worst 20-year stretch (1999 through 2018) turned $10,000 into $29,543.
The worst 30-year stretch (1993 through 2022) turned $10,000 into $154,335.
Those are the floors; what happened to the investor with the most unfortunate timing of the past 50 years. The averages sit well above them, and the best 30-year stretch turned $10,000 into $460,979.
What This Means for Retirement Planning
If you are already retired and wondering how much you should still be invested in stock, the numbers above support money expert Clark Howard’s general rule for owning stock in retirement.
Clark’s 15/50 rule says that if you expect to live at least another 15 years, you should keep at least 50% of your portfolio in stocks.
The worst 15-year stretch, which started at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000, still produced a 4.19% annual return. A healthy 65-year-old is more likely than not to live into their 80s, which means part of their portfolio may have 20- or 30-year time horizons.
For many retirees, the bigger threat isn’t a market crash. It’s inflation slowly reducing the purchasing power of a portfolio that is too conservative.
At the same time, the short-term data explains why many retirees maintain a cash cushion covering several years of expenses. Keeping short-term needs in cash or other safer investments means you don’t have to sell stocks during a downturn like the one from 2000 through 2002.
That cushion gives your investments time to recover.
Of course, history is not a guarantee of future returns. The next 50 years may look different from the last 50 years. But history provides an important lesson: The longer investors have stayed invested, the less likely they have been to experience permanent losses.
Final Thoughts
Stock market declines are inevitable. But losing money permanently has historically been much less common for investors who gave their investments time to grow.
No one can predict what the market will do next year or even next month. But if you’re investing for retirement or another long-term goal, history suggests that staying invested through the ups and downs has given investors some of their best odds of success.
Time in the market — not trying to perfectly time the market — has been one of the biggest advantages available to long-term investors.
You can explore any start and end year yourself, along with the full rolling-return table, in the S&P 500 Investment Calculator. Return data is total return including dividends, from NYU Stern.
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