What the record shows
From May 2003 through Sep 2026, Quiet Compounding 125 compounded at 18.4% a year after trading costs. $10,000 invested at the start grew to about $524,125.
That is 2.2 points a year more than Quiet Compounding, its default benchmark, over the same months, and it out-returned Quiet Compounding in all 3 decades in the record.
Its deepest decline was 9.8%, from a peak in Aug 2020 to a low in Oct 2020, and it was back to its old high by Nov 2020.
Return is only half the picture. The Ulcer Performance Index measures return against the depth and length of drawdowns, and on it Quiet Compounding 125 scores 7.58, ahead of Quiet Compounding at 6.89.
In the 91 months the S&P 500 fell, Quiet Compounding 125 still made money in 34% of them.
Return by decade
| Annual return | 2000s* | 2010s | 2020s* |
|---|
| Quiet Compounding 125 | +20.7% | +14.7% | +21.9% |
|---|
| Quiet Compounding | +18.5% | +12.5% | +19.5% |
|---|
| S&P 500 | +5.0% | +12.9% | +15.3% |
|---|
| 60/40 | +5.1% | +9.4% | +9.4% |
|---|
* Partial decade, annualized over the months available.
Through the hard stretches
Total return over each period, start of the first month to the end of the last.
| Period | QC125 | QC | S&P 500 | 60/40 |
|---|
| Global financial crisisNov 2007 to Feb 2009 | +4.4% | +4.4% | -51.0% | -32.3% |
|---|
| COVID crashFeb 2020 to Mar 2020 | +3.3% | +3.3% | -19.6% | -11.9% |
|---|
| 2022 rate shockJan 2022 to Dec 2022 | +1.7% | +1.7% | -18.2% | -15.9% |
|---|
How it behaves month to month
| Since May 2003 | Worst 12 months | Positive months | Positive when S&P 500 fell | Correlation to S&P 500 |
|---|
| Quiet Compounding 125 | -2.7% | 73% | 34% | 0.54 |
|---|
| Quiet Compounding | -2.6% | 72% | 34% | 0.53 |
|---|
| 60/40 | -27.5% | 68% | 8% | 0.98 |
|---|
Every figure is net of trading costs and computed from the same monthly data as the rest of the site, over the months all the portfolios shown have in common (May 2003 to Sep 2026). Returns before an ETF's launch come from a matching index, as explained in where the data comes from. Backtests are hypothetical and are not a promise of future results.
