Why we built it
Most investing calculators assume a steady return, such as seven percent a year, and project it forward. Real markets do not behave that way. They surge, stall and fall, and the Canadian dollar and inflation move at the same time. Maple Investor replays what actually happened, month by month, using Canadian dollars and Canadian inflation, so that you can see the real path rather than an average.
The project is aimed at self-directed Canadians who invest through a TFSA, RRSP or non-registered account and want context for questions like whether to hold U.S. stocks, how much inflation eats into returns, or what a monthly contribution would have become.
How it works
The site is a static web application. A monthly dataset covering Canadian and U.S. equities, gold, the USD/CAD exchange rate and the Bank of Canada consumer price index is served as a single file, and the calculations run entirely in your browser. There is no account, no server-side processing of your inputs and no database of user scenarios.
The settings you choose are stored in the page address so you can bookmark or share a scenario. That address contains only the numbers and dates you entered.
Data and its limits
Modern index returns come straight from published series. For older periods the dataset is reconstructed from public sources, including academic datasets, Statistics Canada tables and Bank of Canada data. Where a series did not exist, a closely related one is used as a stand-in and labelled as such. These reconstructions are good for understanding long-term patterns but are not exact.
The calculator does not include fund fees, trading costs, personal taxes or account-specific rules other than a simple estimate of U.S. dividend withholding tax in a TFSA.
Our principles
We aim to keep the tool free, fast and private. We explain assumptions rather than hiding them, we label estimates as estimates, and we do not sell investment products or recommend specific securities. If you spot an error in the data or the explanations, please let us know so it can be corrected.
Ready to explore? Open the calculator.