About InvestGraph

InvestGraph is a free, browser-based simulator that shows how a recurring investment plan would have played out if you had followed it in the past.

What it does

You choose a stock or ETF, a start and end date, an optional lump sum to begin with, and a recurring amount to add every week, two weeks, month, or quarter. InvestGraph replays that plan against real daily historical prices and dividends, and shows you how much you would have put in, what the holding would have been worth along the way, and how much came from dividends. The result is drawn as an animated chart that you can watch, scrub through, and export as an MP4 video or GIF.

The goal is to make dollar-cost averaging tangible. Reading that "regular investing smooths out volatility" is one thing; watching your simulated contributions buy more shares during a downturn, and seeing how long the recovery took, is another.

Who it is for

• New investors who want to understand how regular contributions, market swings, and dividends interact before committing real money.
• People comparing plans, for example monthly versus quarterly contributions, or reinvesting dividends versus taking them as cash.
• Writers, teachers, and creators who want a clear, shareable visual of how a historical investment plan behaved.

InvestGraph is an educational tool. It does not know anything about your finances, and it does not recommend any security or strategy.

How the simulation works

Every simulation follows the same fixed rules, so results are reproducible and comparable:

• Contribution timing. The initial investment (if any) is made on the start date. Recurring contributions begin one interval after the start date and repeat at that interval. If a scheduled date falls on a weekend or market holiday, the purchase happens on the next trading day. Contributions that would roll past the end date are skipped.
• Price used. Each purchase is made at that trading day's closing price, as provided by the data source. Closing prices are used as reported rather than "adjusted" for dividends, because dividends are applied separately (see below) and adjusting the price as well would count them twice.
• Fractional shares. Every contribution is fully invested, so the simulation buys fractional shares.
• Dividends. On each ex-dividend date, the simulation credits dividend cash equal to the shares held before that day multiplied by the dividend per share. If "Reinvest dividends" is on, that cash immediately buys more shares at that day's close. If it is off, the cash is held separately and earns nothing. In real life a dividend is usually paid some days or weeks after the ex-dividend date; the simulation simplifies this by applying it on the ex-date.
• Total invested counts only the money you contributed. Dividends never inflate it, even when reinvested.
• Currency label. The currency label is purely cosmetic. It changes the text displayed next to amounts and nothing else. No exchange-rate conversion is performed; prices are in the currency the security trades in. A Korean stock is priced in won and a US ETF in dollars, whatever label you type.
• No costs. The simulation ignores brokerage fees and commissions, taxes, dividend withholding tax, bid-ask spreads, and slippage.

The results panel shows final value, total invested, total return, CAGR, cumulative dividends, final share count, and a full transaction list. Each metric is defined precisely in the results explanation on the simulator page.

Limitations

A simulation like this is a simplified model of the past, and it is worth being clear about what it cannot tell you:

• Past performance does not predict future results. A plan that worked well over one period may do poorly over the next.
• Real costs are missing. Fees, taxes, and spreads reduce real-world returns, sometimes substantially over long periods.
• The annualized return is simplified. CAGR is calculated as if all of your money had been invested on the start date. For a plan with ongoing contributions, this tends to understate the size of the true annualized return, whether it is a gain or a loss.
• Data can be imperfect. Historical prices and dividends come from a third-party source and may be delayed, revised, incomplete, or occasionally wrong. See Data Sources.
• Survivorship bias. You can only simulate securities that still have price history available. Companies and funds that failed or were delisted are often missing, which can make history look kinder than it was. Our guide to common backtesting mistakes covers this and other pitfalls.
• Behavior is not modeled. The simulation never panics, never skips a contribution, and never sells. Real investors sometimes do.

Privacy

InvestGraph has no accounts. Your simulation inputs are sent to our server only to run the calculation, and the chart animation and video export run entirely in your own browser. The Privacy Policy has the details.

Questions or feedback

Found a bug, a data problem, or something unclear? Please get in touch.