S&P 500 / 10-year tape

Miss the 10 best days and $10,000 becomes , not

The last ten years of S&P 500 closes, day by day. All ten of the biggest up-days began with the market already below its 200-day average, in the same weeks as the worst crashes. That is why timing the exit is so hard to get right.

Step 1: your guess

Put $10,000 in the S&P 500 index on . Left alone it is worth today. Now you sit out the 10 best days of the decade (10 of about 2,500). What is it worth?

$25,000

Step 2: sit out more days

Days sat out: 10

Fully invested

Scenario

Blue: fully invested. Amber: your scenario. Ticks at the bottom mark the days you sat out (green = best days, red = worst days). Drag over the chart to read values.

Step 3: the twist, they come in pairs

A rule like "sell when it gets scary" sells you out near the bottom and misses the rebound days that follow within days. Dodging only the worst days looks great on paper, but nobody knows in advance which days those are.

The 20 best days (tap a row)

#	Date	Gain	Nearest top-20 crash day

Sources and method

S&P 500 daily closing values: S&P Dow Jones Indices via FRED, series SP500 (fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SP500), retrieved 16 October 2026, 2,513 trading-day closes from to . Daily change = close divided by previous close. "Below its average" means the previous close was under its 200-day simple average. This is the price index: dividends and fees are left out, so real returns differ. A past-data illustration, not investment advice.