S&P 500 Index Today: Live Price, Chart and Performance

The S&P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the share prices of roughly 500 large companies listed on U.S. exchanges, weighted by the market value of their publicly available shares. It is one of the most widely used benchmarks for large-cap U.S. stocks. Fund managers measure themselves against it, retirement plans hold funds built on it, and futures and options tied to it are among the most actively traded derivatives in the world.

Two points shape how the quote should be read. First, the index level is a calculated number, not a price you can pay. Nobody buys “one S&P 500.” Investors get exposure through funds, futures or options, and each of those has its own price, costs and tracking behavior. Second, the headline figure is a price return index. It reflects changes in share prices only. Dividends paid by member companies are not included, so the performance figures shown in the quote understate what an investor who held the stocks and reinvested dividends would have earned.

How to Read the S&P 500 Quote

Index level. The large number is the current calculated value of the index, expressed in index points. The “USD” label indicates that the underlying stock prices are in U.S. dollars. The level has no meaning in isolation: a reading of 5,000 does not say the market is “expensive” or “cheap.” It only becomes useful when compared with another reading of the same index.

Change and percent change. The daily change compares the current level with the previous close:

• Point change = current level − previous close
• Percent change = (current level − previous close) ÷ previous close × 100

Hypothetical example: if the previous close was 5,000.00 and the index now stands at 5,100.00, the point change is +100.00 and the percent change is +2.00%. Percent change is the more useful figure for comparing days across history. A 100-point move was a 10% swing when the index stood near 1,000 in the late 1990s, but it is a much smaller move at higher levels.

Previous close. This is the official closing level from the prior regular trading session. It is the reference point for the daily change, not the opening level of the current day.

Day range. The lowest and highest levels the index reached during the current session. A wide range relative to the net change tells you the market moved sharply intraday even if it finished near where it started.

52-week range. The lowest and highest levels over the past year. A simple way to use it is to measure how far the current level sits from either end:

• Distance from 52-week high = (current level ÷ 52-week high − 1) × 100
• Distance above 52-week low = (current level ÷ 52-week low − 1) × 100

Hypothetical example: with a 52-week high of 5,500 and a current level of 5,225, the index is (5,225 ÷ 5,500 − 1) × 100 = −5.0% below its high. A decline of 10% from a recent high is commonly labeled a correction, and 20% a bear market, though these are conventions rather than formal rules.

Exchange. The field reads SNP, a data-feed code for S&P index values rather than a stock exchange. The index is not a listed security, so no shares of it trade on any exchange.

Period returns (1D, 5D, 1M, 6M, YTD, 1Y). These show the percentage change in the index level over each window. YTD (year to date) is measured from the final close of the previous calendar year.

Timestamp and source. The time and data provider shown under the price identify which reading you are looking at. Because the index is calculated only during the regular U.S. session, a reading taken in the evening or on a weekend is the last calculated value from the most recent session, not a live market price.

What the S&P 500 Is

S&P Dow Jones Indices, a company majority-owned by S&P Global, owns and calculates the S&P 500. It is designed to represent the large-cap segment of the U.S. equity market, and the index provider describes its constituents as covering roughly 80% of available U.S. market capitalization.

Several features distinguish it from other well-known indexes:

• It is not a list of the 500 biggest companies. Membership is decided by a committee applying published rules on size, liquidity, profitability and public float. A company can be large enough to qualify by market value and still be left out, for example if it has not met the earnings requirement.
• It does not contain exactly 500 stocks. It has 500 member companies, but a few companies are represented by more than one share class (Alphabet’s Class A and Class C shares are the best-known case). The index therefore usually holds slightly more than 500 securities.
• It is weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization. Bigger companies count for more, and only the shares available to public investors are counted. A 1% move in the largest member moves the index far more than a 1% move in the smallest.
• It covers all major sectors. Member companies are classified into the 11 sectors of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), from information technology to utilities. That makes it far broader than the 30-stock Dow and more balanced across sectors than the tech-heavy Nasdaq indexes.

In everyday use, the name is often shortened to “the S&P.” Its ticker on most data platforms is SPX (sometimes shown as ^GSPC). Related indexes such as the S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600 are separate products.

History of the S&P 500

From the 1923 Composite to the 500-Stock Index of 1957

Its roots go back to the 1920s. In 1923, the Standard Statistics Company began publishing a stock index covering 233 U.S. companies, calculated weekly. In 1926 it introduced a 90-stock composite index that was calculated daily. In 1941, Standard Statistics merged with Poor’s Publishing, a firm that traced its origins to Henry Varnum Poor’s 19th-century railroad guides, to form Standard & Poor’s.

The modern S&P 500 was launched on March 4, 1957. Advances in computing made it practical to calculate a 500-stock index throughout the trading day. The index was set to a base value of 10 for the average level of the 1941 to 1943 period. By the time of its launch, stock prices had risen enough that the index stood in the 40s.

At launch, the index followed a fixed composition: 425 industrial companies, 25 railroads and 50 utilities. Financial companies were added in 1976, when the industry groupings were adjusted. The fixed sector quotas were abandoned in 1988. Since then, the committee has selected companies to keep the index representative of the large-cap market rather than to fill predetermined slots.

Methodology has continued to change. The most significant shift came in 2005, when S&P phased in float adjustment, so that each company’s weight reflects only shares available for public trading rather than every share outstanding. In 2012, Standard & Poor’s index business combined with the Dow Jones index business to form S&P Dow Jones Indices, putting the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average under the same provider.

Milestones and Record Levels

Round-number milestones carry no economic meaning, but they mark how the index has compounded over time:

• 100: the index first closed above 100 in 1968.
• 1,000: reached in early 1998, near the height of the late-1990s technology boom.
• 1,500: the index peaked just above 1,527 in March 2000 before the dot-com bust, and it took until 2007 to return to that area.
• 2,000: first crossed in 2014, after the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis carried the index well past its 2000 and 2007 peaks.
• 3,000: reached in 2019.
• 4,000: reached in 2021, during the rebound that followed the 2020 pandemic crash.
• 5,000 and 6,000: both crossed in 2024.

A record high in nominal terms is not the same as a record in purchasing power. Adjusting index levels for consumer prices, using data such as the U.S. inflation rate by year, shows longer stretches below prior peaks than the nominal chart suggests, particularly around the high-inflation 1970s.

How the S&P 500 Is Calculated

Float-Adjusted Market-Cap Weighting

Each company’s influence on the index depends on its float-adjusted market capitalization:

Float-adjusted market cap = share price × shares outstanding × investable weight factor (IWF)

The investable weight factor is the fraction of shares available to ordinary investors. Shares held by founders, executives, other companies, governments or other strategic holders are excluded. A company with 1 billion shares outstanding, of which 200 million are held by its founding family, would have an IWF of roughly 0.80.

To get the level, the float-adjusted market caps of all members are added together and divided by a number called the divisor:

Index level = Σ (price × shares × IWF) ÷ divisor

A company’s weight in the index is its float-adjusted market cap divided by the total for all members. This has a direct consequence for how the index moves.

Hypothetical example: if one company makes up 7% of the index and its shares rise 10% while every other member is flat, the index rises about 0.7%. If a company with a 0.05% weight rises 10% on the same day, the index barely moves (about 0.005%). On any given day, a handful of the largest companies can account for most of the index’s change.

Cap weighting also means the index rebalances itself as prices move. When a company’s share price rises faster than the rest of the index, its weight increases without anyone buying or selling anything. Index funds that hold every stock in proportion to the index need to trade mainly when the index adds or removes companies or when share counts change.

The Index Divisor

The divisor exists to keep the index level continuous. Without it, the index would jump every time the membership changed or a company issued or bought back shares, even if no stock price had moved.

Hypothetical example: suppose the index’s total float-adjusted market cap is $50 trillion and the divisor is 10 billion, giving a level of 5,000. The committee then replaces a company worth $100 billion with one worth $150 billion. The total market cap rises to $50.05 trillion purely because of the swap. To keep the level at 5,000 at the moment of the change, the divisor is raised to $50.05 trillion ÷ 5,000 = 10.01 billion. After the adjustment, only price movements change the index level.

The divisor is adjusted for events such as:

• additions and deletions of index members;
• share issuance and share buybacks that change shares outstanding;
• changes in a company’s investable weight factor;
• spinoffs and certain special dividends.

Ordinary stock splits do not require a divisor change in a cap-weighted index, because the share count rises in the same proportion that the price falls, leaving market value unchanged. That is a major difference from the price-weighted Dow Jones Industrial Average, where splits do require divisor adjustments.

Regular cash dividends also do not trigger a divisor adjustment in the price index. When a stock goes ex-dividend its price drops by roughly the dividend amount, and the price index absorbs that drop. This is the mechanical reason the headline index understates investor returns, and why S&P publishes separate total return versions.

How Companies Join and Leave the S&P 500

Eligibility Criteria

S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes the rules for adding companies. The main criteria include:

• U.S. domicile. The company must be considered a U.S. company, based on factors including where it is incorporated, where its headquarters and operations are, where its shares primarily trade and how it files with the SEC.
• Listing. Shares must trade on an eligible U.S. exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq or Cboe’s equity exchanges. Over-the-counter stocks are not eligible.
• Market capitalization. The company must meet a minimum unadjusted market cap. The threshold is reviewed and raised periodically as the market grows, so a fixed figure goes out of date quickly.
• Float. At least 10% of the company’s shares must be available to the public.
• Liquidity. The stock must trade actively. The rules require an annual traded value relative to float-adjusted market cap of at least 0.75 and a minimum of 250,000 shares traded in each of the six months before evaluation.
• Financial viability. The sum of the company’s four most recent quarters of earnings, measured under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), must be positive, and the most recent quarter must also be positive.
• Seasoning. Newly public companies must generally have traded for 12 months before being considered.

Meeting the criteria makes a company eligible; it does not guarantee entry. An eligible company may wait until a spot opens.

Existing members do not have to keep meeting every addition criterion. The provider applies looser standards for removal to reduce turnover, so a member whose market value slips below the addition threshold or that posts a losing quarter is not automatically removed.

The Index Committee and Rebalancing

Membership decisions are made by the U.S. Index Committee, a group of S&P Dow Jones Indices staff. The committee meets regularly and can make changes at any time when needed, such as when a member is acquired, merges, goes bankrupt or is spun off. Changes are usually announced several trading days before they take effect.

Many companies leave the index because of corporate events: when a member is bought by another company, a replacement is needed. Others are removed when they no longer represent the large-cap market well, for example after a long decline in market value, and may be moved to the S&P MidCap 400. Some new members arrive from the MidCap 400 as they grow.

Separately from membership changes, the index has a scheduled quarterly rebalance effective after the close on the third Friday of March, June, September and December. At these dates, share counts and investable weight factors are updated so that weights reflect current capital structures. Large share changes between rebalances can be applied sooner.

Because so much money is invested in funds that track the index, those funds must buy a newly added stock and sell a removed one around the effective date. That can produce heavy trading volume in those shares on that day.

S&P 500 Sectors and Concentration

Every member is assigned to one of the 11 GICS sectors:

• Information Technology
• Health Care
• Financials
• Consumer Discretionary
• Communication Services
• Industrials
• Consumer Staples
• Energy
• Utilities
• Real Estate
• Materials

GICS was developed in 1999 by S&P and MSCI. Real Estate was split out of Financials as its own sector in 2016. Communication Services replaced Telecommunication Services in 2018, absorbing major internet and media companies from Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary. Those reclassifications changed sector weights without any trading, which matters when comparing sector history across those dates.

Because the index is cap-weighted, sector weights are not fixed. They follow the relative market value of each industry, and they shift substantially over time. Energy carried a much larger weight in earlier decades than it does now, Financials grew heavily before the 2008 crisis and shrank after it, and Information Technology has been the largest sector in recent years. On any day, the index can rise while most sectors fall if the largest sectors gain enough.

The same arithmetic produces concentration. When the largest companies grow faster than the rest of the market, the top ten names account for a larger share of the index. Periods of heavy concentration have occurred before, including around the 2000 technology peak. High concentration has two practical consequences for investors:

1. The index behaves less like a diversified basket of 500 equal pieces and more like a portfolio dominated by a few companies and one or two sectors. An investor who also holds those large companies directly, through individual shares or a technology fund, may own more of them than intended.
2. Returns can diverge sharply from the “average stock.” S&P also publishes an equal-weight version of the index, in which each member gets the same weight at each rebalance. Comparing the two shows whether gains are broad or driven by the largest members.

S&P 500 Historical Performance

Long-Term Returns

Over long periods, the S&P 500 and its predecessor indexes have delivered an average annual total return commonly cited at around 10% in nominal terms, with dividends reinvested and before taxes, fees and inflation. After inflation, the long-run figure is meaningfully lower. These averages are measured over many decades and hide enormous variation from year to year: individual calendar years have ranged from gains above 30% to losses deeper than 35%.

Average and annualized returns are different measures. Hypothetical example: an index that rises 50% one year and falls 50% the next has an arithmetic average return of 0%, but an investor ends with 75% of the starting value, an annualized return of about −13.4%. The annualized (compound) rate is the one that matches what an investor actually ended up with. The return on investment formula covers the basic return calculation behind these figures.

The starting point also matters. Investors who bought at major peaks, such as early 2000, waited years for the price index to recover, while investors who bought near the lows of 1974, 2002 or 2009 saw strong returns over the following decade.

Major Bear Markets and Recoveries

Several deep declines mark the S&P 500’s history, each with different causes and recovery times. Percentages below are approximate peak-to-trough declines in the price index.

1973 to 1974. A decline of close to 50% from the January 1973 peak to the October 1974 low, during a period that combined high inflation, the 1973 oil embargo, rising interest rates, a recession and the Watergate crisis. Because inflation stayed high in the years that followed, the recovery in real (inflation-adjusted) terms took far longer than the nominal chart suggests.

October 19, 1987 (Black Monday). The S&P 500 fell about 20% in a single session, still its largest one-day percentage loss. The broader decline from the August 1987 peak was about a third. Despite the severity of the crash, the index recovered its prior peak within about two years, and the episode led to the introduction of market-wide circuit breakers.

2000 to 2002. After the technology bubble burst, the index fell roughly 49% from its March 2000 peak to its October 2002 low. The decline was drawn out over about two and a half years rather than concentrated in a crash, and the losses were heaviest in the technology and telecom stocks that had dominated the index at the top.

2007 to 2009. The global financial crisis produced the deepest decline in the index’s modern history, about 57% from the October 2007 peak to the March 2009 low. Financial stocks led the losses as the housing market collapsed and major institutions failed or were rescued. The index did not regain its 2007 peak until 2013.

2020. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a drop of about 34% in roughly five weeks, from the February 2020 high to the March 23 low, one of the fastest bear markets on record. Aggressive monetary and fiscal responses were followed by an equally unusual recovery: the index regained its prior high within about five months.

2022. As inflation surged and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates rapidly, the index fell about 25% from its January 2022 high to its October 2022 low. Bonds fell at the same time, so the traditional stock-bond portfolio offered less cushion than usual. The index returned to record levels in early 2024.

Price Return vs. Total Return

S&P publishes several versions of the S&P 500 calculated from the same members and weights:

• Price return (the headline index shown in the quote): share price changes only.
• Total return: assumes all dividends are reinvested in the index on their ex-dividend dates.
• Net total return: like total return, but with dividends reduced by a withholding tax rate, which reflects the experience of some foreign investors.

The gap between price and total return is roughly the index’s dividend yield each year, and it compounds. Hypothetical example: assume prices rise 7% a year and the total return, including reinvested dividends, is 9% a year. Over 30 years the price index grows by a factor of about 1.07^30 ≈ 7.6, while the total return index grows by about 1.09^30 ≈ 13.3. In this example, reinvested dividends leave the investor with an ending value about 75% larger than the price index alone shows.

A fund that tracks the S&P 500 should be compared with the total return index (minus its expense ratio), not with the price index. Otherwise the fund will look like it beat the market when it simply received the dividends. The index’s dividend yield has been far lower in recent decades than in the 1950s through the 1970s, partly because companies have shifted toward share buybacks.

How to Invest in the S&P 500

Since the index cannot be bought directly, investors choose among products that replicate or reference it. The right one depends on account type, holding period, costs and whether the goal is long-term ownership or short-term trading or hedging.

Index Mutual Funds and ETFs

Index mutual funds buy the stocks in the index in proportion to their weights. The first index mutual fund available to retail investors, launched by John Bogle’s Vanguard in 1976, tracked the S&P 500. It was ridiculed at the time as settling for average results; index funds have since become one of the largest categories of investment products in the United States. Mutual fund shares are bought and sold once a day at the net asset value calculated after the close, and some funds require a minimum initial investment.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hold the same stocks but trade on exchanges throughout the day like individual shares. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker SPY), launched in January 1993, was the first U.S.-listed ETF and remains one of the most heavily traded securities in the world. The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) are other widely held examples. Many brokerages allow fractional share purchases, so the per-share price of an ETF is not a barrier.

When comparing S&P 500 funds, the useful points of difference are:

• Expense ratio: the annual fee, deducted from fund assets. Because the funds hold the same stocks, cost is a major driver of differences in long-run returns.
• Tracking difference: how far the fund’s total return falls short of (or occasionally exceeds) the index’s total return over time, reflecting fees, cash drag and securities lending income.
• Trading costs: for ETFs, the bid-ask spread and any commission; for mutual funds, any transaction fees charged by the brokerage.
• Tax treatment: ETFs are often more tax-efficient than mutual funds in taxable accounts because their structure can reduce capital gains distributions.

The share price of an S&P 500 fund has no fixed relationship to the index level. A fund priced at a few hundred dollars per share tracks the percentage moves of an index measured in thousands of points. Only the percentage changes should be compared.

There are also leveraged and inverse ETFs that aim to deliver a multiple (such as 2x or 3x) or the opposite of the index’s daily return. Because they reset daily, their returns over longer periods can differ substantially from the stated multiple of the index’s return, especially in volatile markets. They are designed for short-term trading rather than buy-and-hold ownership.

Futures and Options

S&P 500 futures are cash-settled contracts to buy or sell the index’s value at a future date. They trade on CME Group’s exchange. The original S&P 500 futures contract was introduced in 1982. The E-mini S&P 500 (ticker ES), launched in 1997, has a contract value of $50 times the index level and became the most actively traded S&P 500 futures contract. The Micro E-mini (MES), introduced in 2019, is one-tenth that size at $5 times the index level.

Hypothetical example: at an index level of 5,000, one E-mini contract represents $50 × 5,000 = $250,000 of exposure, and each one-point move changes its value by $50. One Micro E-mini represents $25,000, with $5 per point. A trader posts margin that is a fraction of the contract value, so gains and losses relative to the money posted are magnified, and losses can exceed the initial margin.

Futures prices differ from the index level because of the cost of carry: the futures price reflects interest rates and the dividends expected before expiration. A gap between the futures quote and the index does not, on its own, mean traders expect a rise or fall. Quarterly contracts expire in March, June, September and December.

S&P 500 index options (ticker SPX) trade on Cboe Options Exchange, where they were introduced in 1983. Key features:

• They are cash-settled: no shares change hands at expiration.
• They are European-style: they can be exercised only at expiration, not before.
• The standard monthly options settle on a special opening price on expiration day, while weekly and daily expirations (often listed as SPXW) settle on the closing level.
• The contract multiplier is $100 per index point.

Options are also available on S&P 500 ETFs such as SPY. Those are American-style (exercisable any time before expiration) and settle by delivery of ETF shares, which affects tax treatment and early-assignment risk. Derivatives carry risks that index funds do not: leverage, time decay for option buyers, margin calls and potentially unlimited losses for some option-selling strategies.

S&P 500 Trading Hours

Calculation runs during the regular U.S. stock market session, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, excluding exchange holidays. On scheduled early-close days, such as the day after Thanksgiving, the session ends at 1:00 p.m. ET. Prices from pre-market and after-hours trading in individual stocks do not feed into the official index level.

The quote timestamp on this page is shown in UTC. A 4:00 p.m. ET close appears as 20:00 UTC during daylight saving time and 21:00 UTC in standard time.

S&P 500 futures trade nearly around the clock on CME Globex, from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon (Eastern Time), with a short daily maintenance break in the late afternoon. That is why “S&P futures” quotes move overnight and on Sunday evenings while the index itself is static.

Trading in the index’s members is also subject to market-wide circuit breakers, introduced after the 1987 crash and revised since. During the regular session, a decline of 7% (Level 1) or 13% (Level 2) from the previous close halts trading across U.S. stock markets for 15 minutes if it occurs before 3:25 p.m. ET. A decline of 20% (Level 3) halts trading for the rest of the day. These levels are measured on the S&P 500 itself.

S&P 500 vs. Dow Jones vs. Nasdaq Composite

The three indexes most often quoted in U.S. market coverage differ in size, construction and coverage, which is why they can move by noticeably different amounts on the same day.

Dow Jones Industrial Average. Created by Charles Dow and first published in 1896, the Dow tracks 30 large U.S. companies chosen by a committee. It is price-weighted: a stock with a higher share price has more influence, regardless of the company’s size. A $1 move in any member changes the index by the same number of points, which is why stock splits change a member’s influence and require divisor adjustments. See the Dow Jones Industrial Average quote page for its own history and methodology.

Nasdaq Composite. Launched in 1971 with a base value of 100, the Composite includes nearly all common stocks listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market, which amounts to thousands of companies. Like the S&P 500 it is weighted by market capitalization, but it has no profitability requirement and includes many small companies. It is heavily weighted toward technology and related growth sectors, so it has tended to rise more in technology-led rallies and fall more in technology-led declines. Its decline after the 2000 peak, for example, was far deeper than the S&P 500’s. The Nasdaq-100, a separate index of the 100 largest non-financial Nasdaq-listed companies, is often confused with the Composite.

S&P 500. It sits between the two: much broader than the Dow and more diversified across sectors than the Nasdaq Composite. It is limited to large companies that pass the committee’s eligibility review, including a profitability test at entry. Its float-adjusted cap weighting means each company counts in proportion to the value of its publicly available shares, not its share price.

Two practical consequences follow from those differences:

• Point moves are not comparable. The Dow’s level is several times the S&P 500’s, so its daily point changes are larger even when the percentage moves are similar.
• Overlap is substantial. Many of the Dow’s members are also S&P 500 members, and the largest Nasdaq-listed companies are among the biggest S&P 500 weights. On days driven by mega-cap stocks, all three can move together; on days driven by small-cap or non-tech stocks, they can diverge.