How much will RM1,000 earn? Honest return expectations, and what "losing money" really means

“Daus, if I invest RM1,000, how much will I get in a year?”

“Where does the profit go? Do I have to sell first?”

“If the market crashes, do I lose all my money?”

These three questions land in Daus’s DMs almost every day, in different words. This page answers all three honestly, including the parts people rarely talk about.

Two ways shares pay you

When you buy a share or an ETF, your money can grow in two ways.

1. The price goes up. You buy one unit at USD50. A year later it is USD60. If you sell, you make USD10 per unit. If you don’t sell, that profit is still “on paper”.

2. . Some companies pay part of their profit to shareholders in cash, usually every quarter or every half year. The money goes straight into your Moomoo account, and you don’t have to sell anything to get it.

Most US index ETFs, like S&P 500 ETFs, pay a small dividend (around 1% a year), and dividends on US shares have 30% tax withheld before they reach your account. So for ETFs like these, most of the return comes from the price going up, not from dividends.

If your goal is to have money coming in every month from dividends, that’s a different strategy. Daus explains it with a calculator in dividends: money that arrives by itself.

Paper profit vs real profit

In the Positions tab, Moomoo shows the profit or loss on each share in green or red. That number changes every second while the market is open.

Paper profit (unrealized) = the difference between the current price and the price you bought at. It isn’t money yet. Tomorrow it can go up, tomorrow it can go down.
Real profit (realized) = once you’ve sold. The sale proceeds come in as cash, and after settlement you can use or withdraw it.

This means a red account doesn’t mean you’ve lost the money. If you haven’t sold, you still hold the same units. All that changed is today’s price of those units.

But this line has limits. If you hold a company’s share and the company really is getting worse, waiting won’t save you. “It’s not a loss until you sell” is only true if what you hold eventually recovers. For a broad ETF that holds hundreds of companies, history shows it recovers. For a single company, there’s no guarantee.

How to read P/L in the app

Daus has explained every column in the Positions tab (Today’s P/L, Position P/L, Market Value) in after your first stock purchase. If you want to know your overall profit including money already withdrawn, calculate: current account value minus (total deposits minus total withdrawals).

What return is realistic?

Daus uses the S&P 500 index as the example because it has the longest history, and many of Daus’s audience hold ETFs that track this index.

Long-term average: over nearly 100 years, the S&P 500 has risen about 10% a year on average, dividends included, in USD.

But that average fools the eye if you don’t look year by year:

Year	S&P 500 return (dividends included, USD)
2008	−37%
2019	+31%
2020	+18% (even though it fell 34% in March)
2021	+29%
2022	−18%
2023	+26%
2024	+25%

See that? Not one year came out at exactly 10%. In some years you feel like a genius, in some years you feel like closing the account. The people who got that 10% average are the ones who stayed invested through the red years, not the ones who sold in a panic.

Three more things Malaysians need to count:

Currency exchange. The returns in the table are in USD. If the ringgit strengthens against the USD during the time you hold, your return in ringgit gets smaller. If the ringgit weakens, it gets bigger.
Fees. Every purchase has a fee. For small purchases, the fee can be around 2%. Full details in Moomoo fees.
30% dividend tax on US share dividends.

So for planning, Daus prefers to use a lower estimate, for example 6% to 8% a year, so you don’t end up disappointed.

Worked example: RM1,000 in one go

This table shows RM1,000 left alone, with no top-ups and no selling, at three different average rates. This is a maths example, not a forecast.

Average per year	After 1 year	After 5 years	After 10 years	After 20 years
4%	RM1,040	RM1,217	RM1,480	RM2,191
7%	RM1,070	RM1,403	RM1,967	RM3,870
10%	RM1,100	RM1,611	RM2,594	RM6,727

Notice two things. First, the first year looks very small. Making RM70 a year on RM1,000 is not exciting. Second, the big part comes after 10 years, because last year’s profit also grows this year. This is why Daus always says shares are for money that can sit for a long time.

Worked example: RM200 every month

For most people, a more realistic way is to add a little every month. If you put in RM200 a month for 10 years, the total you put in is RM24,000.

At an average of 7% a year, the final value is around RM34,600.
At an average of 4% a year, around RM29,500.
If the market goes sideways for the whole 10 years (0%), you still have RM24,000 minus fees.

Again, this is maths, not a promise. How to set up automatic monthly buying is in the RSP tutorial.

“If the market crashes, do I lose everything?”

Short answer: for a broad ETF, going to zero is almost impossible. For a single company, it can happen.

An S&P 500 ETF holds around 500 big American companies. For it to hit zero, nearly all of those companies would have to go bankrupt at the same time. What usually happens is a big drop, then a recovery. The worst example in modern times: from 2007 to 2009, the S&P 500 fell about 57% from its peak, and it took around five and a half years for the price to get back to that peak.
A single company’s share can fall to zero if the company goes bankrupt. That’s why Daus puts the large part in ETFs, and individual shares are only a small part.
Without margin, the most you can lose is the money you put in. You will never owe Moomoo money.
With margin, it’s a different story. You’re using borrowed money, so you can lose more than your own capital, and you have to pay interest. Check and turn off margin using the margin tutorial.
Leveraged ETFs (for example TQQQ, SOXL) are designed to move two or three times as much in a day. When they fall, they fall by multiples too, and they can shrink badly even if the original index recovers. Not for holding long term.

What Daus does when the account is red

Daus doesn’t sell in a panic. Daus’s RSP keeps running every week, so when the price drops, the same money buys more units. This is Daus’s own choice, based on Daus’s own situation. It is not financial advice for you.

Daus understands why people ask. Some are under pressure, some have seen others post big profits on social media.

The honest answer: there is no share that can do that safely and consistently.

To double your money in a month, you’d need a 100% return in a month. The stock market gives about 10% on average a year.
Shares that really do rise 100% in a month are usually small, highly speculative shares. They can also fall 80% in the same week. The people posting profits rarely post when they lose.
A simple rule: at an average of 10% a year, money takes about 7 years to double.

If someone offers a package, a signal group or “account management” with promises of daily or weekly profit, that’s a sign of a scam. The list of warning signs and how to check a licence is in scams and investor safety.

If you’re under debt pressure, investing in shares is not a quick way out. A safer order of steps is in sort your money before investing.

“How much does Daus himself make?”

Daus doesn’t share the RM figures in Daus’s account. What Daus can share: as of October 2026, the US part of Daus’s Moomoo account (mostly ETFs) is up overall, while Daus’s Bursa (Malaysian) share holdings are down a little. Daus’s crypto investments are down a lot, and Daus has shared those figures openly before.

So even Daus has some things up and some things down. What keeps the overall picture moving in the right direction is the broad ETF part, which Daus adds to a little every week and doesn’t touch. The list of what Daus holds is in how to choose shares or ETFs, Section 4.

Summary

Returns come from the price going up and from dividends. For US index ETFs, mostly from the price going up.
Red in the app = paper loss. It becomes a real loss when you sell.
The S&P 500’s historical average is about 10% a year, but year by year it can range from −37% to +31%. For planning, use 6% to 8%.
Without margin, the worst loss = your capital. A broad ETF very rarely goes to zero, a single company’s share can.
Money needs time. If you need the money within 3 years, read short-term money first.

This content is educational sharing, not financial advice. Past returns don’t guarantee future returns. S&P 500 return figures are annual returns including dividends in USD, rounded.