A $10,000 investment in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) on November 6, 2024, the morning after Donald Trump won the election, would be worth roughly $12,600 today, counting dividends. SPY closed that day at $591 and traded around $735 this morning. No trading. No timing. Just owning the index through every headline that was supposed to break it.
What you actually bought
SPY is the original index fund wrapper, tracking the 500 largest US companies weighted by market cap. The mechanics are deliberately boring: the fund holds every name in the S&P 500 in proportion to the index, charges a 0.0945% expense ratio, and lets cap weights decide what dominates the portfolio.
The top ten holdings make up roughly 36% of net assets, so a buy-and-hold position since election night is really a concentrated bet on a handful of AI-exposed mega-caps that you happened to make by accident.
Did it deliver
Short answer: yes, with caveats. The price return from November 6, 2024 through June 24, 2026 was 24%, and the one-year return through that same end date was 22%. Year-to-date the fund is up 8.4%, even after slipping 1.66% over the past month.
The five-year price return is 85% and the ten-year is 325%. A high-yield savings account at 4% over the same 18 months would have produced a small fraction of the gain. The index holder is up roughly $2,600 more on a $10,000 stake, and that gap is the argument for owning equities through political transitions you do not personally like.
The Iran scare that paid you to ignore it
The 18 months were not quiet. In mid-June 2026, one r/stocks post collecting 941 upvotes described SPY’s round trip from $686 when the Iran war started to $756 within weeks, and framed the geopolitical shock as a buying opportunity rather than a reason to sell.
Another r/stocks thread in the same window captured the opposite mood, an investor admitting they pulled all their money out in 2025 and could not get back in at historic highs. The index absorbed the shock and ground back. The people who sold are still trying to find an entry.
What the math leaves out
SPY pays a quarterly distribution, so an investor who did not reinvest dividends did somewhat worse at $12,406. Second, concentration risk is real.
The top three names alone are 19% of the fund, which is a different SPY than the one your father bought in the 1990s. In addition, the part nobody quoting an 18-month return wants to acknowledge, is that this window happened to dodge a serious tariff drawdown.
A similar drawdown like the one during last year’s spring could leave your investment at a severe loss if it were to happen again.
Who this fits
SPY suits an investor who has decided that stock-picking is not their edge and that 0.09% in fees is fair for owning the American corporate sector wholesale. It fits a retirement account, a taxable brokerage building a long-term base, or anyone who has accepted that the cost of equity returns is sitting through Iran scares, tariff shocks, and inflation headlines without flinching.
However, SPY does not fit an investor who needs the money in two years, who cannot stomach a 30% drawdown when one arrives, or who needs current income. Moreover, for income, a dividend-focused fund or short-duration Treasurys do that job more reliably.
The investor who bought SPY the day after the 2024 election and went golfing made roughly $2,400 on $10,000 by doing nothing. That said, the next 18 months will demand the same discipline and may produce a very different number.
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