Quick Read
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SPY turned $10,000 invested the day after Trump’s 2024 win into roughly $12,406, representing a 24% price gain from holding through every alarming headline.
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SPY absorbed the 2026 Iran war scare within weeks, rewarding patient holders while investors who sold are still searching for a lower re-entry.
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A $10,000 investment in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) on November 6, 2024, the morning after Donald Trump won the election, would be worth roughly $12,600 today, counting dividends. SPY closed that day at $591 and traded around $735 this morning. No trading. No timing. Just owning the index through every headline that was supposed to break it.
What you actually bought
SPY is the original index fund wrapper, tracking the 500 largest US companies weighted by market cap. The mechanics are deliberately boring: the fund holds every name in the S&P 500 in proportion to the index, charges a 0.0945% expense ratio, and lets cap weights decide what dominates the portfolio.
The top ten holdings make up roughly 36% of net assets, so a buy-and-hold position since election night is really a concentrated bet on a handful of AI-exposed mega-caps that you happened to make by accident.
Did it deliver
Short answer: yes, with caveats. The price return from November 6, 2024 through June 24, 2026 was 24%, and the one-year return through that same end date was 22%. Year-to-date the fund is up 8.4%, even after slipping 1.66% over the past month.
The five-year price return is 85% and the ten-year is 325%. A high-yield savings account at 4% over the same 18 months would have produced a small fraction of the gain. The index holder is up roughly $2,600 more on a $10,000 stake, and that gap is the argument for owning equities through political transitions you do not personally like.
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The Iran scare that paid you to ignore it
The 18 months were not quiet. In mid-June 2026, one r/stocks post collecting 941 upvotes described SPY’s round trip from $686 when the Iran war started to $756 within weeks, and framed the geopolitical shock as a buying opportunity rather than a reason to sell.
Another r/stocks thread in the same window captured the opposite mood, an investor admitting they pulled all their money out in 2025 and could not get back in at historic highs. The index absorbed the shock and ground back. The people who sold are still trying to find an entry.
