Five-year, $30,000 plans by start year: dollar-cost averaging vs lump sum ($ thousands)
Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-07-16, from Does Dollar-Cost Averaging Work?.
| start_year | lumpsum_final | dca_final |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 54.6 | 42.2 |
| 2017 | 60 | 45.5 |
| 2018 | 45.5 | 37 |
| 2019 | 55 | 38.1 |
| 2020 | 55.7 | 44.3 |
| 2021 | 55.3 | 43.6 |
- Rows × columns
- 6 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
start_year |
text | 6 distinct values (2016, 2017, 2018…) | |
lumpsum_final |
number | 45.5 to 60 | |
dca_final |
number | 37 to 45.5 |
Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.
Run it yourself
This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.
WITH
monthly AS (
SELECT toStartOfMonth(dt) AS mo, argMin(c, dt) AS px
FROM (
SELECT toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS dt,
argMax(toFloat64(close), window_start) AS c
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
AND window_start >= '2016-01-01 00:00:00' AND window_start < '2026-07-01 00:00:00'
AND (toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
+ toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) BETWEEN 570 AND 959
GROUP BY dt
)
GROUP BY mo
),
w AS (
SELECT mo, px,
sum(500.0 / px) OVER (ORDER BY mo ROWS BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND 59 FOLLOWING) AS dca_shares,
count() OVER (ORDER BY mo ROWS BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND 59 FOLLOWING) AS n_ahead,
leadInFrame(px, 59) OVER (ORDER BY mo ROWS BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND 59 FOLLOWING) AS end_px
FROM monthly
)
SELECT toString(toYear(mo)) AS start_year,
round(30000.0 / px * end_px / 1000, 1) AS lumpsum_final,
round(dca_shares * end_px / 1000, 1) AS dca_final
FROM w
WHERE toMonth(mo) = 1 AND n_ahead = 60 AND toYear(mo) BETWEEN 2016 AND 2021
ORDER BY start_year
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