What if you'd bought COST on every Costco run?
If you'd bought $1 of COST every time you ran into Costco since May 2016 — about three trips a month — you'd have put in $363 and be holding around $1,199 of Costco today.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. A money-weighted return north of 22% a year — and the shallowest drawdown of any retailer in the set.
The short version
- $3 a month into COST for ~10 years became about $1,199 from $363 contributed. Money-weighted return: ~22.7% annualized, as of April 2026.
- COST is a winner on this specific window. We're showing it because you asked, not because it's representative of retail.
- The drawdown was the shallowest of any big-box retailer in the group — about 18% in 2022. The stock slid with the market and then decoupled.
- What this article describes hypothetically, Slyce does automatically: purchases at Costco trigger a fractional-share buy of COST, receipt by receipt.
The number, set up honestly
The math: three $1 contributions a month, starting May 2016, each buying COST at that month's adjusted close. Dividends reinvested — Costco pays a regular quarterly dividend (currently yielding around 0.5%) plus occasional special cash dividends, which the adjusted-close series accounts for. Run 121 months. End in April 2026.
Contributed: $363. Current value: about $1,199.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. That's roughly $836 of gain on a decade of $3-a-month purchases — a 3.3x on money spread across the whole window, not dropped in at the start.
The internal rate of return on that cash-flow stream is about 22.7% 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. COST over this specific window beat the index by a wide margin, with a drawdown profile more like a utility than a retailer. See the spend-to-own guide for the thesis this sits inside.
Why we're showing you the winners
Worth saying plainly: we picked COST in hindsight. In 2016 you didn't know Costco would out-compound most of the S&P while barely drawing down through a tech crash, a pandemic, and a 2022 inventory shock. You didn't know the membership-fee flywheel — which renews at north of 90% in the U.S. — would turn into the cleanest recurring-revenue line in big-box retail.
The reason this cluster exists is not to recommend COST. It's to explain the mechanic: if you had a system that captured a slyce of whatever you happened to buy, the portfolio would reflect your spending. Some slyces would be winners. Some would be losers. The spread is the point, not the pick.
That's why our pitch is "a little bit of every company you shop at," not "a lot of Costco."
What Slyce actually does
You don't open the Slyce calculator to simulate this. You spend at Costco the way you already spend at Costco, and Slyce buys a fractional share of COST for you on the way through.
The mechanic: you connect the card or account you shop with. Purchases at Costco — warehouse and Costco.com — pass through a rule that routes a small percentage into a real brokerage account in your name. The shares are COST, not a derivative or a token. They vote with COST, pay the regular and special COST dividends, and sell on any normal brokerage execution. Your Slyces tracks the holding; The Feed tracks the receipts.
The point of running this automatically is the same point as Walmart's run over the same window or the Amazon version of this math: the capture happens at the moment of purchase, not in a separate ritual you never get around to. Costco in particular tends to be a concentrated relationship — if you're a member, you're probably buying a lot of your household from one roof — which means the slyces add up fast on a per-visit basis.
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 — except on COST, the drawdown barely arrived.
COST's worst peak-to-trough decline over the window was about 18% in 2022, when rising rates hit every equity with a growth multiple.[1]Based on historical returns. Past performance doesn't predict future results. On the DCA trajectory, that meant watching a position worth roughly $580 fall to around $475 before recovering later that year. Annoying. Not frightening. By 2023 the account was back above its prior high, and by 2026 it had more than doubled on top of that.
The shallow drawdown is the story worth sitting with. Most equities that compound this fast have at least one 40%+ drop on their record — AMZN had one, MCD had a smaller one, CMG had a bigger one. COST did not. The membership-fee line, the private-label margin mix, and a loyal customer base produced a return profile that didn't punish you for being long. No historical chart comes with a warranty that says the next decade looks like the last — but this one is the cleanest shape in the cluster.
Pitfalls
Three specific things to name, not just as disclaimers but as real risks to the idea of buying COST because the calculator said it worked.
Survivorship bias. COST 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. Warehouse clubs that have folded or been absorbed — Pace, Price Club pre-merger, smaller regional chains — would have been on an equivalent list decades ago. They're not here now. The calculator's universe is survivor-biased by construction, and any historical-return story drawn from that universe inherits the bias.
Concentration risk. The math above is one ticker. A spend-to-own account that shops only at Costco ends up concentrated in Costco. The intended shape of a Slyce portfolio is the mixture of tickers your spending actually touches — COST plus whatever you buy outside the warehouse. One-ticker concentration is the tail risk; diversification comes from the breadth of the wallet, not from an asset-allocation model.
Past returns ≠ future returns. COST compounding near 23% over the 2016–2026 window does not mean COST compounds at 23% over the 2026–2036 window. The forward P/E already prices in a lot of the flywheel continuing to work. The S&P 500's long-run ~10% tells you what diversified equity has done across many windows.[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 $1,199 number calculated? We pulled COST's monthly adjusted closes from Yahoo Finance for May 2016 through April 2026, simulated $3-per-month dollar-cost averaging (three $1 purchases, roughly the typical member's warehouse visit rate), and computed the ending portfolio value using the April 2026 close. Contributions total $363; the portfolio finished around $1,199. Re-runs will differ as the window rolls and prices move.
Does this include the special dividends? Yes. Costco pays a small regular quarterly dividend (current yield around 0.5%) and has declared several large one-time special dividends — $7/share in 2012, $5 in 2015, $7 in 2017, $10 in 2020, and $15 in 2024. The adjusted-close series reinvests all of them across the window.
What was the worst moment? Autumn 2022, when rates-driven multiple compression hit high-P/E names. COST fell about 18% from its 2021 peak before recovering into 2023. On the DCA trajectory, a roughly $580 position bottomed near $475 — far less painful than the drawdowns on AMZN, NKE, or NFLX over the same window.
Can I buy fractional COST through a normal broker? Yes. Every major U.S. broker supports fractional COST orders — you place the order in dollars and the broker computes the share fraction at execution. The slyce you'd own through this product is the same fractional COST you could open at Vanguard; the difference is the trigger.
Why three transactions a month? That's the default in the Slyce calculator for Costco, drawn from typical member visit frequency. If your actual Costco spend is higher or lower, run the calculator with your own numbers — it recomputes the trajectory at any contribution rate.
Does the membership fee go into the investment? No. The Slyce mechanic routes a percentage of your Costco purchases, not the annual membership fee, into COST. The membership fee is what buys you the right to shop at Costco in the first place; the slyces come from the actual spending that follows.
Next steps
If you want to run this same math against your actual spending — the stores you actually shop at, the amounts you actually spend — the Slyce calculator does it for 20 tickers at once. The ending balances are less interesting than the shape: how much you'd have contributed, where the drawdowns were, and how much of the ending balance came from a handful of winners versus a broad spread across your wallet.
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