How Much Money Can You Make Investing in Stocks?

A complete guide to stock market returns, crucial dividends, fatal mistakes, and the magic of compounding

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

This is one of the biggest questions in all of stock market investing:

“How much money can I really make from stocks?”

Let’s cut right to the chase:

If you start early, save steadily, and invest intelligently, you can make a lot of money in the stock market.

OK, but how much is “a lot”?

Based on in-depth research, we uncovered 10 major insights about how much money you can earn in the stock market:

1. Stocks generally return 7–10% per year over long periods of time.
2. In any given year, they could do far better or far worse than that.
3. Over longer stretches of time (10–15+ years), the market almost always makes money.
4. Pay attention to dividend stocks, because roughly 40% of the stock market’s gains tend to come from dividends (although it varies over time).
5. Individual investors may do far better or (more commonly) far worse than the market, depending on how good they are at investing and whether they avoid common mistakes.