S&P 500 (SPY) price, 1995 to 2026

S&P 500 (SPY) closed at $754.95 as of July 2026, up 1.1 percent from the prior period. The window runs from January 1995 and spans a low of $47.09 (January 1995) and a high of $756.48 (May 2026).

How it is measured

The series is the monthly closing price of SPY, the exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500 index of large US companies, from Twelve Data's market feed. Because the fund holds the index's stocks, its price tracks the index almost exactly at a fraction of the index's numerical level, and it trades all day like any share. A price series is not total return: dividends are paid out along the way, so long-run investor returns exceed what the price line alone shows.

What the curve shows

Price charts reward reading structure rather than points: the drawdowns mark the crises, the flat years mark the doubt, and the slope between them is the compounding. Over this window the price rose roughly 16-fold. Held against an index, a single fund's line shows how much of its story is the market's and how much is its own.