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Survivorship in the universe: names trading each year, share still listed in July 2026, and median return

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 2026-07-31, from Look-Ahead Bias: The Backtest Killer.

as of table 10×6read in context →
Survivorship in the universe: names trading each year, share still listed in July 2026, and median return — 10 rows by 6 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
yearnames_tradingstill_listed_pctmedian_return_all_pctmedian_return_survivors_pctsurvivor_gap_pp
2015706352.5-5.39-5.290.09
2016700955.47.6510.853.2
2017709257.77.5111.323.81
2018724561.1-13.67-13.030.64
2019760563.414.117.042.94
2020774567.91.062.741.68
2021850669.16.8810.473.59
2022921773.5-20.26-19.950.31
2023901380.84.655.781.13
2024925787.52.242.90.66
Rows × columns
10 × 6
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for Survivorship in the universe: names trading each year, share still listed in July 2026, and median return, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
year number 2,015 to 2,024
names_trading number 7,009 to 9,257
still_listed_pct number 52.5 to 87.5 percent
median_return_all_pct number -20.26 to 14.1 percent
median_return_survivors_pct number -19.95 to 17.04 percent
survivor_gap_pp number 0.09 to 3.81

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.

the exact SQL behind every number
WITH recent AS (
    SELECT DISTINCT ticker
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
    WHERE date >= toDate('2026-06-15')
      AND date <= toDate('2026-07-28')
),
per_name AS (
    SELECT toYear(date) AS year,
           ticker,
           argMin(toFloat64(close), date) AS first_close,
           argMax(toFloat64(close), date) AS last_close,
           count() AS sessions
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
    WHERE date >= toDate('2015-01-01')
      AND date <= toDate('2024-12-31')
      AND close > 1
    GROUP BY year, ticker
    HAVING sessions >= 200
)
SELECT year,
       uniqExact(ticker) AS names_trading,
       round(100 * uniqExactIf(ticker, ticker IN (SELECT ticker FROM recent)) / uniqExact(ticker), 1) AS still_listed_pct,
       round(100 * quantileDeterministic(0.5)(last_close / first_close - 1, cityHash64(ticker)), 2) AS median_return_all_pct,
       round(100 * quantileDeterministicIf(0.5)(last_close / first_close - 1, cityHash64(ticker), ticker IN (SELECT ticker FROM recent)), 2) AS median_return_survivors_pct,
       round(100 * (quantileDeterministicIf(0.5)(last_close / first_close - 1, cityHash64(ticker), ticker IN (SELECT ticker FROM recent))
                    - quantileDeterministic(0.5)(last_close / first_close - 1, cityHash64(ticker))), 2) AS survivor_gap_pp
FROM per_name
GROUP BY year
ORDER BY year

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