Performance of Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P 500 in 2021
All three major US stock indices, Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite and S&P 500, are ending the year 2021 with a big gain when compared to the beginning of the year. Unlike other years, all three indices tracked pretty close to each other with S&P 500 ending up with higher gain than the other two indices.
Returns of Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P 500 in 2021
S&P 500 is ending this year with ~26% gain, followed by NASDAQ composite index with 23% increase and Dow Jones with about 19% gain this year. This is one of the rare years where S&P 500 had more gains than both Dow Jones and NASDAQ composite index.
Comparing the Returns of Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P 500 across the last 20 years
In fact, looking over the annual returns of all three major indices for the last 20 years show that 2021 is the only time S&P 500 has beaten Dow Jones and NASDAQ.
We can also see that in the last 20 years, the 3 major indices had negative returns just four times ignoring volatile beginning of 2022.
Here is the same data, US Stock market indices returns, as a table.
You can also download the yearly returns of Dow Jones Industrial average, S&P 500 and NASDAQ composite as excel file here. DJI_SP500_NASDAQ_returns_since_2001_as_of_Jan_25_2022
P.S. A slight discrepancy in the returns is possibly due to difference in using closing or adjusted returns to compute the returns.
[…] S&P 500 index had a great year in 2021 with about 26% gain in return. First time in a while S&P 500 index also beat Dow Jones Industrial Average index and NASDAQ composite index. In addition, equal weighted S&P 500 index also performed equal to market cap weighted S&P 500 in 2021. […]