Indices & ETFs

Thirty years of markets, undressed

An average return says almost nothing on its own. What matters is what you had to live through to earn it: how scattered the years were, how deep the falls went, how long you spent below the previous high.

Period

Indices

What €10,000 invested once would have become

—

Shaded bands: the main drawdown episodes. A logarithmic scale gives equal height to equal percentage moves whatever the level reached — the right way to read long horizons.

Annualised return

Equivalent compound rate over the period

Annual volatility

Standard deviation of annual returns — the size of the shaking

Comparison table

Click a column header to sort

—

Each year’s return, index by index

Blue: positive year · Red: negative year · Intensity = magnitude

Empty columns mark years before the series begins. Values in percent, rounded to the nearest unit inside the cells; the exact figure appears on hover and in the table.

Index factsheet

The full profile of an index: how scattered its years are, how long it spent below its high, which ETFs track it.

—

Annualised return

—

Best year

—

Worst year

—

Positive years

—

Return year by year

—

Time spent below the previous high

Gap to the highest year-end value — the measure of what you must stomach

—

ETFs available in Europe

Examples of UCITS-eligible funds tracking this index

Fund	Ticker	ISIN	Annual fees	Cost on €10,000 / yr

A non-exhaustive list given as an example: neither a recommendation nor a ranking. Check the characteristics (assets under management, replication method, PEA eligibility, accumulating or distributing) in the issuer’s key information document before investing.

Past performance does not predict future performance. The returns shown are those of indices, calculated before management fees, trading costs and tax: an ETF tracks its index minus its ongoing charges, and the gap compounds over time. See the methodology for calculation conventions, currencies and the difference between price return and total return.

How to read this page

This page does not track products but indices, over thirty-one years. The two are not the same, and the gap between them is explained below.

What €10,000 would have become. A single investment, with no further contributions, reinvested year after year. The figure is striking, but it must be read with its start date: beginning in 1995 or in 2000 changes the result radically for the same index. That is precisely what an average hides.

The annualised return. This is a geometric mean, not an arithmetic one. The distinction is not cosmetic: a year at +50 % followed by one at −50 % does not make 0 % but −13.4 %, because you never return to your starting point after a fall. The annualised return is the constant rate that would have produced the same final capital — the only honest one for comparing two series.

Annual volatility. The size of the swings around that average. Two indices with the same annualised return but different volatility did not feel the same: one rose steadily, the other in lurches. It is this second column that decides whether you hold your position or sell at the worst moment.

The return of each calendar year. The most instructive view on the page, because it makes visible what no average shows: the order in which the years arrived.

The NR, TR and PR badges are not decoration. NR reinvests dividends net of withholding tax, TR reinvests them gross, PR does not count them at all. Comparing a PR index to an NR index understates the former by roughly its dividend yield — one to two points a year, enough to overturn a ranking over twenty years.

An index is not an investment

This is the most important limit of this page, and the one least often stated elsewhere.

An index is a statistical construction. It bears no management fees, no transaction costs, no tracking difference, and no tax on the dividends the fund collects. The product that tracks it bears all four. The annual gap between an index and the best ETF tracking it is measured in tenths of a point — little over one year, a great deal over thirty.

The calculation currency adds a second layer. A world index calculated in dollars returned what it returned in dollars; a euro investor also bore the exchange-rate effect, one way or the other depending on the period.

Finally, these series end on 31 December 2025 and are annual. They describe whole calendar years, never a moment: a February crash fully recovered by November does not appear. That is why the Crises & cycles page exists — it measures peak to trough, which gives far harsher figures, and far closer to what was actually lived.

What can legitimately be drawn from it

Thirty years of data predict nothing. They serve something else, more useful: calibrating expectations.

They give an order of magnitude for the return an equity market has historically produced over a long period — neither the 15 % one sometimes reads, nor the 2 % of a savings account. Above all they give the size of the swings around that average, which is the information most people underestimate before they start.

It is that return-and-volatility pair that you can carry into the calculator to project your own situation, with your contributions, your horizon and your country's tax rules. The methodology page details every formula used here and its limits.