Portfolio Calculator

This portfolio calculator analyzes your asset mix to estimate expected return, risk, and long-term growth. You enter how much you hold in stocks, bonds, real estate, and cash. It then returns a weighted expected return, a portfolio volatility figure, and a Sharpe ratio. To go deeper on any one piece, try the asset allocation calculator or the expected return calculator.

Diversification lowers risk by spreading money across assets that do not move together. The SEC notes that diversification can limit losses when one investment falls but others hold up. Because stocks and bonds often move in different directions, a blended portfolio swings less than a single asset class. This is why volatility can drop more than expected return, giving you a better risk-adjusted result. Read the volatility figure above as your portfolio's diversification score. The lower it sits compared with an all-stock mix, the more your holdings are actually spreading risk instead of moving together.

A higher Sharpe ratio is better because it means more return per unit of risk. The example balanced portfolio above shows a Sharpe ratio of 0.50. A 100% stock mix may earn a higher expected return but often posts a lower Sharpe ratio, since its risk rises faster than its reward. Use the portfolio risk calculator to compare risk-adjusted results across mixes.

No, the figures are estimates, not guarantees. They use long-run historical averages as model assumptions, such as 10% expected return for stocks and 4% for bonds. Real markets vary widely from year to year, and past performance does not predict future results. In the example, a typical year for the balanced portfolio could range from about $97,583 to $117,317. To see how a specific mix would have actually performed across real historical market cycles instead of a model estimate, compare the best portfolio backtesting tools.

Growth depends on your mix, contributions, and time horizon. In the example, a $100,000 balanced portfolio with $500 monthly contributions projects to about $679,255 over 20 years. Of that total, $220,000 is contributions and $459,255 is estimated growth. The classic 60/30/10 split is close to a 60/40 portfolio calculator mix, and you can compare more tools on our calculators page.

Alpha measures the return your portfolio earned above what a benchmark like the S&P 500 would predict for the same amount of risk. Attribution splits that gap into two pieces: how much came from your overall asset mix, and how much came from the specific holdings you picked. Tracking error measures how closely your return follows a chosen benchmark day to day. Duration measures how much a bond's price moves for each 1% change in interest rates. This calculator computes your expected return, volatility, and Sharpe ratio directly, and each of those other measures is built from those same inputs. It doesn't output a separate alpha, attribution, or duration number for every holding. A portfolio concentrated in one stock shows higher volatility here than the same money spread across stocks, bonds, real estate, and cash. That volatility gap is the same risk alpha, attribution, and concentration analysis are all trying to describe in more specialized terms. For the exact formula behind beta, variance, turnover, and NAV, with worked examples, see our portfolio metrics formulas guide.

Fees reduce your return every year, and because your portfolio compounds, that reduction compounds too. Take the balanced $100,000 portfolio example above, growing at a 7.45% expected return with $500 added monthly: over 20 years it reaches about $679,255. Add a 1% annual fund fee and the return drops to 6.45%. The same portfolio then reaches only about $580,764, a gap of roughly $98,490 lost to fees alone over the same 20 years. Run your own numbers through the calculator above at a lower return to see what a real fund fee would cost your specific mix.