Returns heat map
This chart answers the bluntest question in investing: for the same portfolio, how differently did people fare depending on the year they started? Each column is a starting year, each row down is one more year of holding, and every cell is the annualized real return of that exact experience. It unpacks "the long-run average" back into individual lives.
Read down a column to follow one starting year as the holding period deepens; read across a row to compare everyone who held for the same N years from different starts. Watch the shape of the dark patches: they keep teaching the same lesson — bad starting years get diluted by time, but not instantly.
Bands are half-open intervals: −4% ~ 0% means [−4%, 0%).
Data and limits
The color scale is banded by real annualized return, with band edges printed in the legend — no tricks hidden in a gradient. The annual-data, US-dollar, and proxy caveats from the other charts all apply. Cells near the bottom rest on fewer samples — the longest holding periods have exactly one path each, so don't read a single cell as a law.
Portfolio math assumes annual rebalancing.
Data are annual real (inflation-adjusted) returns; sources and definitions are documented in "Where the chart data comes from" on the methodology page. methodology page
Everything above is computed from historical data and your inputs. History does not guarantee the future. Not investment advice.
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