Missing the best stock market days calculator
Compare a continuous historical holding with a hypothetical path that removes the largest single-day gains. Select a US stock or ETF and the number of best days to see how a small set of sessions changed the compounded result.
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How this is calculated
Daily returns are split-adjusted, then the largest single-day gains are removed and the remainder compounded. A day the stock did not trade counts as a flat day and cannot be selected. This is arithmetic on the historical series, not a claim about any strategy: nobody could have known in advance which days these were, in either direction.
The heaviest horizontal line on the chart marks the amount originally invested.
What this calculator shows
- Two return paths
- The chart keeps the actual buy-and-hold record beside the hypothetical missed-days result.
- Daily compounding
- The comparison removes selected split-adjusted daily returns before recompounding the series.
- Historical illustration
- The calculation does not assume anyone could identify the largest gains in advance.