Performance
The Record
Real money, both accounts, since 1 January 2016. Measured against the MSCI World. Every figure below is calculated from broker statements, and the rules that produce them are on the Methodology page.
As of 31 August 2026
13.89%
a year
Last 5 years
MSCI World 11.43% — an excess of 2.46 percentage points a year
+297.5%
Since inception (1 Jan 2016)
13.81% a year vs the MSCI World's 12.77%
12.90% a year
Money-weighted return
the actual experience of the capital; the headline measure
−44.8%
Maximum drawdown
daily, since inception
The curve
Chart data loading.
Indexed to 100 at inception. Absolute amounts are never published.
Standard periods
| Period | Almanac | MSCI World | S&P 500 | Excess vs MSCI World |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last 1 year | 54.19% | 21.58% | 20.19% | +32.60pp |
| Last 3 years | 27.84% a year | 20.43% a year | 20.63% a year | +7.41pp a year |
| Last 5 years | 13.89% a year | 11.43% a year | 12.46% a year | +2.46pp a year |
| Last 10 years | 14.09% a year | 13.14% a year | 15.01% a year | +0.95pp a year |
| Since inception | 13.81% a year | 12.77% a year | 14.72% a year | +1.04pp a year |
Fixed trailing windows, published together with since-inception, so the starting date never moves to flatter the result.
Every calendar year, including the bad ones
| Year | Almanac | MSCI World | S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 16.16% | 7.50% | 11.43% |
| 2017 | 34.50% | 22.77% | 21.60% |
| 2018 | −6.97% | −9.01% | −5.46% |
| 2019 | −8.42% | 27.13% | 30.55% |
| 2020 | 44.14% | 16.06% | 17.62% |
| 2021 | 1.95% | 22.19% | 29.35% |
| 2022 | −26.91% | −18.11% | −18.72% |
| 2023 | 38.87% | 24.27% | 26.74% |
| 2024 | 23.04% | 19.11% | 25.25% |
| 2025 | 33.79% | 21.03% | 17.45% |
| 2026 YTD | 21.61% | 13.47% | 12.21% |
Read this before the numbers persuade you.
The S&P 500 beat Almanac since inception — 14.72% a year against 13.81%. Almanac beat it over the trailing five and three years. Both are true and both are above.
Almanac's objective is to beat the MSCI World over rolling five-year periods. Measured across the whole record, it did so in 30.9% of rolling five-year windows and 35.5% of rolling three-year windows. The objective describes the period ahead; those percentages describe the period behind.
2019 and 2021 were bad years — 35 and 20 percentage points behind the index. A concentrated contrarian approach produces years like those, and there will be more.
Past performance does not guarantee future results.
How this was measured
- Both real accounts, no exclusions, no simulated or back-tested periods.
- The larger account is reconciled against the broker's own year-end net asset values at eleven annual checkpoints; the worst difference is 0.27%.
- Money-weighted return is the headline measure; time-weighted return sits beside every benchmark comparison. Benchmark is the MSCI World Net Total Return via IWDA, the USD line of IE00B4L5Y983.