Rolling Returns Calculator
Calculate rolling returns across multiple periods.
Enter up to 6 annual returns to see 3-year rolling compounded growth and overall CAGR.
Rolling returns calculate the investment return for a series of overlapping periods rather than a single start-to-finish figure. Instead of “what was the return from 2018 to 2024,” rolling analysis asks “what was the compounded return for every 3-year window within that span” — 2018-2021, 2019-2022, 2020-2023, and so on.
For each rolling window, the compounded return:
Compound Return = (1 + r1) x (1 + r2) x (1 + r3) - 1
And the annualized CAGR for any window of N years:
CAGR = [(1 + Total Return)^(1/N)] - 1
Rolling returns expose something a single long-term number hides: sequence risk. Two funds can have identical 10-year CAGRs but very different distributions of 3-year rolling returns. The one with a bad early window might have devastated a retiree who started withdrawing at the wrong time.
The S&P 500 has had rolling 10-year periods that produced negative real returns — 1999 to 2009 being the most recent. It has also had rolling windows above 15% CAGR. Knowing the average without knowing the distribution gives false confidence.
Fund managers use rolling returns as a consistency metric. A fund that beats its benchmark in 80% of all rolling 3-year windows is a different product than one that happened to beat it in the single period reported in the marketing materials.
For this calculator, enter annual returns as percentages. Blank years are ignored. The rolling 3-year windows use your returns in the order entered (Year 1 is the oldest). If you have fewer than 3 years of data, only the overall CAGR is shown.