The table below shows correlations between pairs of assets/indexes. This is the correlation of calendar year total returns over the historical data available for both assets/indexes. Calendar years start from the year stated in the left column, all the way up to and including 2022.

Interpretation

Correlation is important for diversification. A diversified portfolio includes assets with low or negative correlation.

Assets that are highly correlated (correlation closer to 1.0) tend to lose value at the same time. Investors with large sums of money in highly correlated assets risk substantial losses. Uncorrelated assets (correlation closer to 0.0) tend to move up and down independently of one another— when one goes down, the other may go up or down with normal probability. For example, gold and bonds are the best diversifiers to the S&P 500 in this table.

Unfortunately, all we can provide are historical values. These should be helpful, but correlations could change substantially in the future.

Examples

The correlation between gold and the S&P 500 has been 0.11—positive but small. This comes from the table entry under the S&P 500 column in the gold row. That correlation is based on calendar years 1955-2022, because those are the years with data for both assets.

Table of correlations

Related links

S&P 500 historical annual returns

Dow historical annual returns

Real estate (REIT) fund VNQ historical annual returns