DCA calculator

Usually not, in pure return terms, and this calculator shows you exactly that comparison. Markets rise more often than they fall, so money invested earlier tends to spend longer compounding; a lump sum at the start typically wins in a rising market. What DCA actually buys you is a smaller worst case: you can’t put everything in the day before a crash, and a plan you keep beats a perfect plan you abandon.

Compare the two figures for a few different tickers and periods. You’ll notice the gap is widest in strong bull runs and narrows, or flips, when the period starts near a peak.

Every buy happens at the first available closing price of the month (or week), using prices adjusted for splits and dividends so corporate actions don’t distort the result. “Total invested” is simply your contribution added up; the strategy return compares today’s value of the shares against that total. The benchmark invests the same overall amount at the first buy’s price.

The same €100-a-month question, on the companies and funds it gets asked about most. Type any of these into the calculator above, what follows is what to look for once you do.

Apple, the iPhone maker, and one of the most widely held shares in the world. Apple is the share most people mean when they ask this question, and it is also the one where the answer flatters the strategy most, a company that grew into the largest in the world makes almost any buying schedule look clever. That is survivorship in one sentence: the interesting test is whether you would have picked it in advance.

Tesla, the electric-vehicle maker. Tesla is the clearest case for buying on a schedule rather than in one go. Its drawdowns have been severe enough that the date of a lump sum decides most of the outcome, while a monthly plan buys straight through them. Whether that produced a better result over this particular window is exactly what running it will tell you, and it is not the same answer in every window.

Nvidia, the chip designer behind most AI training hardware. Nvidia is where spreading your money out costs the most. It fell hard on the way. This was never a smooth climb, but it rose so far overall that every month you waited bought fewer shares than the month before. That is the honest mirror image of the case for buying on a schedule: the protection you get in a bad run is paid for in a great one.

Microsoft, the software and cloud company. Microsoft is the middle of this list in almost every respect, a real drawdown but not a collapse, a solid climb but not a spectacular one. That makes it the useful control: with nothing dramatic for either approach to exploit. The gap comes down to little more than how long each euro spent in the market.

Amazon, the online retailer and cloud provider. Amazon is one of the few names on this list where buying monthly actually finished ahead of putting the same money in on day one. It fell far enough, for long enough, that a schedule kept buying at prices a lump sum never got, which is the whole argument for dollar-cost averaging, and it is worth noticing how rarely it comes out this way.

Alphabet, Google's parent company. Alphabet is a reminder that the ticker matters: GOOGL and GOOG are the same company with different voting rights and slightly different prices, so a backtest of one is not automatically a backtest of the other. Type GOOGL for the class A share; GOOG is priced separately.

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta fell hard and recovered hard, and a monthly plan bought the whole way down and the whole way back. It is one of the few names here where that schedule finished ahead of a lump sum, the clearest case on this list that what matters is not how deep the fall was, but that you were still buying during it.

Netflix, the streaming company. Netflix lost most of its value in a matter of months and then made it back. Running the same monthly plan across that shape is the cleanest demonstration on this list of what dollar-cost averaging actually buys you, not a higher return, but a result that depends far less on when you happened to start.

the S&P 500, the 500 largest US companies, held through the SPY exchange-traded fund. This is the version of the question most people should be asking. A single company can go to zero; an index quietly replaces its failures. Run this one first: it is the result every single company here has to be measured against, because if a stock did not beat it, the extra risk bought nothing.

the Nasdaq-100, the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq, held through QQQ. The Nasdaq-100 is the S&P 500 with the steady parts removed, heavily weighted toward the same technology names that appear individually on this list. It rises faster and falls harder, which makes its drawdown the more informative figure of the two.