Frequently Asked Questions

Dollar-cost averaging is an investment strategy where you invest a fixed amount of money at regular intervals (like monthly), regardless of market conditions. This helps reduce the impact of market volatility by spreading your purchases over time, potentially lowering your average cost per share.

Our data comes from Twelve Data, a reliable financial data provider. We use adjusted closing prices that account for stock splits, dividends, and other corporate actions to ensure accurate historical returns. All data is updated regularly to maintain accuracy.

No, this tool is for educational purposes only. We provide historical data and calculations to help you understand how DCA strategies have performed in the past. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Always consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

To keep calculations simple and focused on the core DCA strategy, we don't include trading fees, taxes, or fund management fees. In reality, these costs would reduce your returns. Many modern brokerages offer commission-free trading, which minimizes transaction costs for DCA strategies.

Our calculations are based on actual historical adjusted closing prices and use a month-by-month simulation approach. This provides a realistic view of how DCA would have performed. However, the results don't account for fees, taxes, or the exact timing of when you might have made purchases within each month.

Currently, we support major index ETFs (S&P 500 via SPY, NASDAQ 100 via QQQ) and popular large-cap stocks (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, NVIDIA). We're working to add more asset classes including international markets, bonds, and additional stocks.

Our historical data covers from 2000 to the present, giving you over 20 years of market history including major events like the dot-com crash, 2008 financial crisis, and 2020 pandemic. This allows you to see how DCA performed through various market cycles.

While our tool shows historical performance of DCA strategies, it shouldn't be your only retirement planning resource. Consider factors like inflation, taxes, changing income, and diversification across asset classes. Professional financial planning software and advisors can provide more comprehensive retirement analysis.

Several factors could cause differences: transaction timing within months, fees and commissions, taxes on dividends and gains, fund expense ratios, and market conditions different from historical patterns. Our calculator provides a baseline for understanding DCA performance.

We update our price data daily to ensure calculations reflect the most current market information. The calculator automatically uses the most recent data available for your selected time period.

Yes! You can run multiple calculations with different assets, time periods, and contribution amounts to compare strategies. Try comparing lump-sum investing vs. DCA, different assets, or various contribution amounts to see how they would have performed historically.

Our data currently goes back to 2000, allowing for analysis periods up to about 24 years. For longer historical analysis, you might need specialized financial databases, though the principles of DCA tend to be consistent across longer time periods.