How much can you hope to make, and what type of investment is most likely to help you reach your goals? We all hope to make money when we invest, but you can’t predict the future. However, how an investment has done in the past may help you to learn about its potential in the future.

How can past results help me estimate what I’ll make investing?

• Use the return on an investment over several years to estimate the average return you could make.
• Some investors go back five years, while others go back 10 or 20 years. The more years you look at, the more valid the comparison will be.

Some sample portfolio returns

These charts summarize the returns on different types of investments at different points in time: June 1999, June 2002, June 2004 and June 2006. Within each chart, you will find the average return over one year, three years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years for several major indexes. Indexes track the performance of certain types of investments. These indexes are shown: 

• Scotia Capital Long-term Bond Index: The average return for the period of bonds with remaining terms greater than 10 years, based on several hundred different federal, provincial, municipal, and corporate bonds.
• Standard and Poor’s (S&P 500): The average return for the period of the stock of 500 of the largest companies (around 70% of all companies) listed in US stock exchanges.
• S&P/TSX Composite Index: The average return for the period of the stock of 300 of the largest companies traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. 
• 90-Day Canada T-Bill: The average return for 90-day Canadian treasury bills (T-bills), with the interest reinvested for the period.

See how they performed over time – and how much the returns for these indexes changed from year to year. Learn more now