VOO Historical Returns by Year: Annual Performance & Average Return

"What has VOO returned each year?" and "what is VOO's average annual return?" are among the most common questions about the fund. Rather than a table of numbers that goes stale, the chart below is built from live price data — scroll to it and the bars animate up for gains and down for losses, and the figures count up to their real values.

VOO returns by year (live, animated)

Each bar is one calendar year's approximate total return, with dividends reinvested. Green bars rise above the line for positive years; red bars drop below it for negative years. The final bar, marked with an asterisk, is the current year to date and will keep changing until the year ends.

How these returns are calculated

VOO launched on September 7, 2010, so 2011 is its first full calendar year. Each year's figure compares the last adjusted monthly closing price of that year to the last one of the year before. Adjusted prices fold in dividends as if they were reinvested, which makes the result a total return rather than a price-only return. The annualized figures compound the last 3, 5 or 10 full calendar years and exclude the current partial year, so they don't swing with a few months of data.

Because this method uses monthly prices and a standard adjustment, treat the numbers as close approximations. For official returns, use Vanguard's VOO fund page.

What is VOO's average annual return?

There's no single answer, because the "average" depends on which years you include. The live annualized figures above (3, 5 and 10 full years) are the honest way to answer it: each is the constant yearly rate that would produce the same total growth. Notice how different they can be — a period that includes a strong run looks much better than one that includes a bear market. Also note the difference between an arithmetic average of yearly returns and an annualized (geometric) return: the geometric figure is lower whenever returns vary a lot, and it's the one that matches what your money actually did.

The down years

In the full calendar years since 2011, VOO had two negative years: 2018 and 2022. The 2022 drop was the larger, and a fund that swings that much can take years to recover from a peak-to-trough decline. That's the trade-off behind the higher long-run returns of stocks: you get them by holding through years like these. If a drop of that size would make you sell, that's valuable information about your own risk tolerance — see our discussion of dollar-cost averaging for one way investors smooth out entry points.

What this history does and doesn't tell you

VOO tracks the S&P 500, so its history reflects one specific stretch of U.S. large-cap stock market conditions — a period that includes an unusually strong run for U.S. stocks. That's a useful measure of how far VOO can rise and fall, but it isn't a promise of future returns, and it's not a reason to assume the next decade looks the same. Planning with a range of assumptions is more reliable than planning around the best recent years. Our VOO ROI calculator turns your own start value, end value and time into a total return and annualized rate. For where VOO stands this year, see the year-end outlook. This is educational information, not personalized financial advice.