SPY · QQQ · DIA · IWM · VTI · daily data Sep 30, 2022 – Sep 30, 2026
Four years of index funds, in two halves
One bull market, two different rides. $10,000 in the S&P 500 at the end of September 2022 was $22,488 four years later. The first two years made +65% and never fell more than 10% from a high. The second two made +36%, and lost 19% in seven weeks of 2025 on the way.
Five funds stand in for the US stock market here. SPY tracks the S&P 500, QQQ the Nasdaq-100, DIA the 30 stocks of the Dow, IWM the small companies of the Russell 2000, and VTI the whole market. The four years run from the close of Sep 30, 2022 to the close of Sep 30, 2026 and split at Sep 30, 2024 into two halves of 501 trading days each: 2022–24 is always teal and 2024–26 always amber. Every chart is a Holochart example that runs live in your browser: hover for values, drag to zoom, click a legend entry to hide a series, drag the 3D charts to orbit. Returns include reinvested dividends. Nothing here is investment advice.
The two halves · The falls · Month by month · Day by day · Risk and return · Who led · What's inside
Where they stand
The last close of each fund, its price change since the split two years earlier, and its total return over the four years.
The two halves
$10,000 in each fund, dividends reinvested. QQQ ended at $28,342, SPY at $22,488, DIA at $18,945 and IWM at $17,697. VTI, which holds the whole market, ends about 2% behind SPY. Switch to the log axis, where equal heights are equal percentage moves: the lines are steeper on the left.
Each half restarted at $10,000 and laid over the other, by trading day. Pick a fund. SPY's first half never closed more than 0.2% below its start and ended at $16,537. Its second half was down to $8,708 on its 130th day (April 8, 2025) and ended at $13,599.
Every fund made less in the second half than in the first. SPY went from +28.6% a year to +16.6%, QQQ from +36.1% to +23.7%, DIA from +23.7% to +11.3%, and IWM from +17.4% to +13.3%.
The same $10,000 quarter by quarter, as a waterfall. Thirteen of SPY's sixteen quarters were gains; the three losses were the third quarter of 2023 and the first quarters of 2025 and 2026. QQQ and IWM gained more dollars in the second half than in the first despite the lower percentage, because they started it with more.
Weekly candles
Each candle is one week, with 10- and 40-week moving averages and volume below. SPY's worst week was the week of March 31, 2025 (−9.1%) and its busiest the week after, with 924 million shares traded. Use the buttons or the slider to zoom.
Monthly bars
One OHLC bar per month for each of the four funds: the tick on the left is the month's open, the tick on the right its close. SPY and DIA closed 34 of 48 months above their open, QQQ 33 and IWM 28.
The falls
How far each fund closed below its previous high. The four years begin in the 2022 bear market, with SPY 24% under its January 2022 high; SPY and QQQ took until December 13, 2023 to get back, and IWM until November 6, 2024. The second half's deepest fall came in spring 2025: SPY lost 18.8% between Feb 19, 2025 and Apr 8, 2025 and closed at a new high on June 26.
Every fall of 5% or more, from the high before it to the day the fund closed above that high again, colored by depth. The diamond marks the low. IWM's fall from its November 2021 high took 753 trading days to recover.
Volatility
The VIX is the market's price for the S&P 500's volatility over the next month. It averaged 17.2 in the first half and 18.5 in the second. Its highest close of the four years was 52.3 on April 8, 2025; in the first half it never closed above 38.6.
What the funds delivered over the trailing 63 trading days. Over the four years QQQ and IWM were about a third more volatile than SPY, and the Dow a little less. Switch to 21 days to see the April 2025 spike at full height.
Month by month
Each cell is one month of one fund. SPY rose in 18 of the first 24 months and 15 of the second 24. All nine funds fell together in nine months, among them March 2025 and March 2026.
The same months for the four funds as 3D bars. Drag to orbit: QQQ's April 2026 (+15.7%) is the tallest bar and its December 2022 (−9.0%) the deepest.
Quarters and years
All four funds rose in 10 of the 16 quarters, five in each half, and all four fell in two: the third quarter of 2023 and the first of 2025. The best quarter was the second of 2026, when QQQ made 27.7%.
By calendar year. The Dow made between +14.7% and +16.0% in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025; QQQ's years run from +54.9% in 2023 to +20.8%.
Any entry, any exit
Buy at the end of one month, sell at the end of a later one: each point is the return of that pair of dates. Of SPY's 1,176 pairs, 45 lost money (inside the dashed lines), and only one of those was bought in the first half and sold in the second. Switch to IWM, where 128 pairs lost.
SPY's return over the trailing 1 to 12 months, week by week. The 12-month return was negative until May 2023 and again for three days in April 2025. Drag to orbit.
Day by day
A fund's daily returns in each half. On the log axis the tails show: SPY's first half ran from −2.9% to +5.5%, its second from −5.9% to +10.5%.
The same distributions as split violins, first half on the left of each fund and second half on the right. The middle of the distribution barely changed; the second half grew longer tails.
The ten best and ten worst days. SPY's best day of the four years (+10.5%, Apr 9, 2025) came three sessions after its worst (−5.9%, Apr 4, 2025).
How rare big days are. SPY moved more than 1% on 128 days of the first half and 104 of the second, and more than 2% on 20 days in each.
Every trading day sorted by half, by what the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 did, and by where the VIX closed. The VIX closed under 15 on 212 days of the first half and 63 of the second. Hover a ribbon to count the days in it.
Monthly returns of each fund in each half, every month a point. SPY's median month was +2.8% in the first half and +0.8% in the second.
Risk and return
The scorecard. SPY's return per unit of volatility went from 1.92 to 1.00, and every fund's deepest fall was deeper in the second half.
All 27 funds on the page by volatility and return, sized by deepest fall: the five index funds, four size and style funds, the eleven S&P 500 sectors, and seven funds for other assets. Press play to move from the first half to the second.
Return per year in each half. Of the 27 funds only Energy did better in the second half; gold made about 25% a year in both.
Volatility, deepest fall and return together, with a line joining each fund's two halves. Drag to orbit.
Every fund across seven axes. Drag along an axis to filter: gold's +146% came with a beta to SPY of 0.24.
Moving together
How closely daily returns track each other. SPY and QQQ correlate at 0.94 and 0.95 in the two halves, SPY and long Treasuries (TLT) at 0.15 in both. No pair is negative over a whole half.
Daily returns of each pair of funds, colored by half. Every pair was more correlated in the second half.
Where the days of SPY and IWM fall together: contours of a 2D histogram over the days themselves.
QQQ against SPY, built with Holochart Express in one call: a least-squares line per half and marginal histograms. QQQ moved 1.28% for each 1% of SPY in the first half and 1.25% in the second.
The correlation of SPY's daily returns with other assets over the trailing 63 days. The line for long Treasuries is below zero on 255 of the 1,002 days and above it on the rest: for most of the four years bonds moved with stocks, not against them.
Who led
Each fund divided by SPY and set to 100 at the start: above 100 it beat the S&P 500. QQQ ended at 126. RSP, which holds the same 500 stocks in equal weights, ended at 78: it made +75% while the index made +125%.
Sectors
The eleven sector funds that make up the S&P 500. Technology led both halves (+93%, then +75%). Three sectors beat SPY in the first half and two in the second, Technology and Energy.
Quarter by quarter. Technology's +44% in the second quarter of 2026 and Energy's +38% the quarter before are the two largest cells.
Ranked every six months. Five different sectors took first place in eight half-years. Technology was first in three of them and tenth in another.
The two halves as polygons. The second-half polygon sits inside the first on ten of eleven spokes; only Energy pokes out.
Beyond US stocks
$10,000 in US stocks, international stocks, bonds, long Treasuries, gold and T-bills. Gold ended ahead of the S&P 500 at $24,623, after peaking at $32,062 in January 2026. T-bills beat both bond funds, and long Treasuries lost 11%.
The same assets ranked year by year. Gold was first in 2024 and 2025 and seventh in 2026; long Treasuries were last in four of the five columns.
A 60/40 portfolio of SPY and bonds, never rebalanced. It ended at $18,029, and its deepest fall was 13% against SPY's 19%. By the end stocks were 75% of it.
The 10-year Treasury yield and the 13-week bill yield. The bill yielded more than the 10-year on 524 of the 1,003 closes, 473 of them in the first half. The four years end with the 10-year at 5.29%, its highest close of the period.
What's inside the S&P 500
SPY's holdings on Oct 1, 2026, the day after the four years end, by sector and stock. Technology is 40% of the fund; NVIDIA, Apple and Microsoft together are 21.5%, more than any other whole sector. Click a sector to zoom in.
The same holdings as rings: sectors inside, and outside them the 32 stocks that weigh more than 0.5% each. Together those 32 are 57% of the index.
By size. The ten largest holdings are 38.9% of the fund, the 50 largest 64%, and the smallest 304 together 12%.
From the index to its sectors to each sector's three largest stocks. Three stocks are 80% of Communication and 18% of Industrials.
The Dow weights its 30 stocks by share price, so its ten largest are 55.2% of DIA, led by Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar.
Eight of the largest S&P 500 stocks against the index, on a log axis. $10,000 in NVIDIA became $188,814. Amazon and Tesla finished below SPY.
Sources
Prices, the VIX and Treasury yields: Yahoo Finance, retrieved Oct 4, 2026. Returns use split- and dividend-adjusted prices. Holdings: State Street's daily holdings files for SPY, DIA and the eleven Select Sector SPDR funds, Oct 1, 2026; a stock's sector is the sector fund that holds it. Details: SOURCES.md. Chart sources: examples/demos/index-funds. This page is a charting demo, not investment advice.