What if you'd bought CMG on every Chipotle run?
If you'd bought $1 of CMG every time you ate at Chipotle since May 2016 — about six visits a month — you'd have put in roughly $726 and be holding around $1,509 worth of Chipotle today.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. That's about 14.1% a year, and it would feel better if a 47% drawdown weren't still unfolding.
The short version
- $6 a month into CMG for ~10 years became about $1,509 from $726 contributed. Money-weighted return: ~14.1% annualized, as of April 2026.
- The story is a 2015–2016 E. coli recovery that ran further than anyone expected, then a 2024–2025 reset that's still going.
- The worst peak-to-trough drawdown is a 47.2% drop in 2025, and it hasn't bottomed. The ending balance you see today could be lower by the time you read this.
- What this article describes hypothetically, Slyce does automatically: purchases at Chipotle trigger a fractional-share buy of CMG, receipt by receipt.
The number, set up honestly
The math: six $1 contributions a month, starting May 2016, each buying CMG at that month's adjusted close (Chipotle has never paid a dividend — the adjusted series reflects the 50-for-1 split in June 2022 and nothing else). Run 121 months. End in April 2026.
Contributed: $726. Current value: about $1,509.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. That's roughly $783 of gain on a decade of $6-a-month purchases — about a 2.1x on money spread across the whole window.
The internal rate of return on that cash-flow stream is about 14.1% per year.Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. For scale: the S&P 500 has historically returned roughly 10% per year nominal since 1957.[2]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. CMG over this specific window outperformed the index. Worth naming that the outperformance starts from a low base — May 2016 was inside the E. coli recovery, when the stock was already well off its 2015 highs — and that the last twelve months have taken back a sizeable chunk of what came before.
Why we're showing you the one still bleeding
Worth saying: we picked CMG knowing the recovery story made the headline number good and the last year made the honesty paragraph interesting. In 2016 you didn't know which direction the recovery would go. Then the 2018 management change arrived, the digital-order stack shipped, and the 2019–2023 run took shares up roughly six times over.
Then 2024 and 2025 happened. Same-store sales growth decelerated, pricing power stopped working, and management turnover reopened every question the prior five years had answered. Shares are down 47.2% from their 2023–2024 peak as of this writing.[1] That drawdown is ongoing — not a historical low we can point to with a recovery date. The DCA account is still above contributions, but by less than it was six months ago. See the spend-to-own guide for the full thesis and spokes on names that compounded more quietly.
What Slyce actually does
You don't open the Slyce calculator to simulate this. You order the carnitas bowl you always order, and Slyce buys a fractional share of CMG for you on the way through.
The mechanic: you connect the card or account you pay with. Purchases at Chipotle pass through a rule that routes a small percentage — the default is 3% — into a real brokerage account in your name. The shares are CMG, not a derivative or a token. They pay no dividend (Chipotle doesn't pay one), but they split with CMG, vote with CMG, and sell on any normal brokerage execution. Your Slyces tracks the holding; The Feed tracks the receipts.
The point of doing this automatically is the same point as the Starbucks version of this math or the McDonald's version of this math: the capture happens at the moment of purchase, not in a separate ritual that most people never get around to.
The shape of the return
The ending balance is the story the article opens with. The drawdown is the part that would have made you quit — and in this case it's the part still happening.
CMG's worst peak-to-trough decline over the window is a 47.2% drop that began in 2024 and deepened through 2025.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. On the DCA trajectory, that meant watching a position worth around $2,800 at the peak fall into the $1,500s by the time this article was drafted. Roughly half of the unrealized gain in the account, gone on paper, inside twelve months.
The 2015 E. coli drawdown was its own story — a 60%-plus decline from pre-outbreak highs. That's the bottom a May 2016 start was building from, and it's why the first three years of the window look slow and the middle six look electric.
The honest read on today: the account is up, but it's been up more, and the trajectory is pointed down. If you're running this math to understand what happens when a growth-consumer name reprices, this is the live case study.
Pitfalls
Three specific things to name, not just as disclaimers but as real risks to the idea of buying CMG because the calculator said it worked.
Survivorship bias. CMG is one of the 20 tickers in the Slyce calculator's pre-built set. That set is drawn from companies that are still publicly traded and still relevant to retail spending. Fast-casual chains that were large retail spenders and are now smaller or gone — Qdoba, Baja Fresh, Noodles & Co on a different trajectory — would have been on an equivalent list in 2013. They aren't here now. The calculator's universe is survivor-biased by construction, which matters more when the category churns.
Concentration risk. The math above is one ticker. A spend-to-own account that only ever buys Chipotle ends up concentrated in Chipotle — and the last twelve months are a reminder that a single-restaurant-chain bet has tails you can't predict. The intended shape of a Slyce portfolio is the mixture of tickers your spending actually touches — CMG plus groceries, gas, coffee, delivery, travel. One-ticker concentration is the tail risk; diversification comes from the breadth of the wallet.
Past returns ≠ future returns. CMG compounding at 14.1% over the 2016–2026 window does not mean CMG compounds at 14.1% over the 2026–2036 window. Growth-consumer names have windows where the unit economics rerate and windows where the rerate unwinds. This window covers both. The S&P 500's long-run ~10% tells you what diversified equity has done across many of both.[2]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results.
For the custodial version of this — running the same mechanic inside a kid's account that also qualifies for the federal program — see the Trump Accounts guide.
FAQ
How was the $1,509 number calculated? We pulled CMG's monthly adjusted closes from Yahoo Finance for the window May 2016 – April 2026, simulated $6-per-month dollar-cost averaging (six $1 purchases, matching a roughly weekly-and-a-half Chipotle habit), and computed the ending portfolio value using the April 2026 close. Contributions total $726; the portfolio finished around $1,509. Re-runs will differ — and with CMG still in drawdown as of April 2026, a week from now the number could be meaningfully different.
What was the worst moment in that decade? The one currently unfolding. CMG is down about 47.2% from its 2023–2024 peak, and the bottom is not established. A DCA account started in 2016 would have seen a paper value around $2,800 at the peak fall into the $1,500s. That's the biggest percent drawdown on the window.
Does this include dividends? No. Chipotle has never paid a cash dividend — the company reinvests everything into new stores and operations. The adjusted-close series we used accounts for the 50-for-1 stock split in June 2022, so the per-share prices and share counts are comparable across the window.
Can I actually buy fractional CMG through a normal broker? Yes. Every major U.S. broker supports fractional CMG orders — you place the order in dollars and the broker computes the share fraction at execution. Before the 2022 split, CMG traded north of $1,500 per share, which made it a poster-child case for fractional access. The slyce you'd own through this product is the same fractional CMG you could open at Fidelity.
Why $1 per transaction and 6 transactions per month? Those are the defaults in the Slyce calculator for Chipotle, drawn from typical household patterns. If your actual Chipotle spend is higher or lower, run the calculator with your own numbers — it recomputes the trajectory for any contribution rate.
Is the drawdown over? We don't know. When this was written, CMG was 47.2% off its peak with no confirmed bottom. A drawdown is only "over" with hindsight. If you're DCA'ing through it, you're buying more shares for the same dollar — the mechanic working as intended, with no promise about when or where the shares recover.
Next steps
If you want to run this same math against your actual spending — the places you actually eat, the amounts you actually spend — the Slyce calculator does it for 20 tickers at once. The ending balances matter less than the shape: how much you'd have contributed, where the drawdowns were, and how much of the ending figure is margin the market could take back on any given quarter.
If you want to skip the modeling and sign up for the product, that's the home page and the waitlist below.
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Published Apr 14, 2026 · Updated Apr 14, 2026