Stocks win over the long run, but "long" can be very long. Guess how long the unluckiest buyer waited, then pick any day since 1971 and run the clock yourself.
Click or drag on the chart, or focus it and use the arrow keys (Shift for a month). Log scale.
Each column is a buy date. Its height is how many years passed before the index closed at or above that day's close. Most days barely register. The spike in 1999 and 2000 is the story. Click to jump.
Share of all buy days whose close N years later was below the buy-day close.
Nasdaq Composite Index daily close (series NASDAQCOM) and US CPI for all urban consumers, seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCSL), both from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and FRED CPIAUCSL, fetched on 28 Oct 2026. The index file runs to ; the latest CPI month is September 2026, and days after it use that value. FRED lists the Nasdaq data as sourced from Nasdaq OMX.
"Back to even" means the first later close at or above the buy-day close. "After inflation" divides each close by that month's CPI, so it measures purchasing power. The index is a price index: dividends are not included, so a real investor's wait would be somewhat shorter. This is history, not advice or a forecast.