My brokerage firm's website is good at showing me how I've personally done with various index funds since buying them - the amount gained. But I frequently want to compare how they all did over the last 5-10 years, and I wanted to see it in one spot.
I've used this formula before but it's darn handy - googlefinance()
For instance, to grab the price of FSKAX one year ago, I'd add this to a cell:
=index(GOOGLEFINANCE("FSKAX","close","9/3/24",3,"daily"),2,2)
If you don't use the INDEX function the googlefinance() will give you a whole table of values, which can be great, but that's not always what I need.
Using this, I recently compared a few funds I am in and calculated their change from 2015 to 2025:
- QQQ INVESCO QQQ TR UNIT SER 1 451%
- FSELX FIDELITY SELECT SEMICONDUCTORS PORT 396%
- SPMO INVESCO MOMENTUM 375%
- FXAIX FIDELITY 500 INDEX FUND 225%
- FSKAX FIDELITY TOTAL MARKET INDEX 209%
- FLCSX FIDELITY LARGE CAP 138%
- FSRNX FIDELITY REAL ESTATE INDEX FUND 21%
SPMO is a bit made up because it didn't exist 10 years ago, but it's all the rage now - it's had a fantastic 2024 and 2025. Running the numbers myself made me realize the story isn't as perfect for all the other years.
But for the others, yes, if you'd invested in QQQ in 2015, you'd have bought into it around $100. Now those same shares are worth over $500. That's a fantastic run for 10 years. It is tech-heavy, and there are those who say we've gotten over-excited about these waves before, so I will give no advice except to say that past performance does not indicate future results.
Real estate funds like FSRNX used to do really well in the early 2000s, now not so much. Large cap stocks had a rough 2018, now everyone loves them.
I like shopping for index funds but my primary philosophy is to keep at least half in whole market indexes, and then leave the rest for shopping around for interesting funds that promote ESG, and industry, a new algorithm that Investco is sure will bring us all favorable wealth.
And beware of the internet. On Reddit, nearly every fund that people are in love with has great 2-5 year performance, but if you look back at a ten or twenty year interval the tale is different. What's worse, 5-10 year intervals aren't available in every stock app! The world wants you to look at daily returns, then a week, a month, 3 months, 6 months - but we're in this for much much longer.
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