SGD500 a Month Since 2010: S&P 500 DCA vs a Singapore Fixed Deposit

Suppose you could go back to 2010 and commit to setting aside SGD500 every month, without a single gap, right up to today. The only choice you had to make was where to put it.

This isn't a real client's story — it's a hypothetical, walked through with real historical data on both paths, to see how far apart they land.

First, the number that matters most: what you put in

From 2010-01 to 2026-06 — 198 months, roughly 16.5 years — at SGD500 a month, that's a total of SGD 99,000 contributed. Every comparison below is measured against this figure.

Two paths, 17 years later

DCA'd monthly into the S&P 500 (dividends reinvested): by 2026-06, the portfolio is worth SGD 369,083 — 3.7× the amount contributed.

Deposited monthly into a rolling ladder of Singapore 12-month fixed deposits (principal + interest re-deposited at each maturity): by 2026-06, the total is SGD 109,160 — 1.1× the amount contributed.

The gap between the two: SGD 259,923. Same money, same discipline — the only difference was where it sat.

When would the FD actually win?

This isn't “the S&P 500 always wins.” The FD tends to come out ahead when:

• You need the money reliably available on a short timeline (say, a house deposit in 1–2 years) and can't risk needing it right when the market is down.
• Your tolerance for principal swings is low — the S&P 500 fell 20–30% within months in both 2020 and 2022; a fixed deposit never does that.
• Once converted to USD, the exchange rate happens to move against you over the long run — FX is a real, non-zero factor in this comparison, not a rounding error.

In other words, this isn't a single-variable “which number is bigger” question — it's a combination of how soon you need the money and how much of a mid-way dip you can stomach.

Licensed Chartered Financial Planner (BNM-LCFP) · JMarc
Figures here use real historical data from 2010-01 to 2026-06 (SPY monthly adjusted close, monthly SGD/USD exchange rates, Singapore 12-month fixed deposit rates) — but past performance does not indicate future performance. The S&P 500 is not guaranteed to repeat the last 17years, and fixed deposit rates move with the market. One methodology note worth flagging: for the Singapore FD rate, MAS stopped publishing its official cross-bank average from July 2021 onward, so that portion of the series is spliced from OCBC's and then DBS's own published rates instead of a true multi-bank average — directionally and roughly right in scale, but not a precise month-by-month market figure. This article compares the asset classes “S&P 500” and “Singapore bank fixed deposits” — it does not recommend any specific fund, ETF, or bank product, and does not constitute personalised investment advice.