S&P 500
IndexS&P 500 P/E ratio: 25.9
The S&P 500 trades at 25.9× trailing 12-month earnings (as of market close, Sep 4, 2026) — the index's total market value over the total profits of its members, as filed with the SEC. The median member trades at 24.1×, and the fund-factsheet method — a weighted harmonic mean of members' own multiples, which leaves out the ones losing money — puts the same basket at 24.9×. That puts today's multiple above 93.3% of all months since 1871 (long-run median 15.1).
- Trailing P/E
- 25.9
- Median member
- 24.1
- Factsheet method
- 24.9×
- Price/Book
- 5.2
Trailing P/E since 1871#
- Long-run median
- 15.1
- Long-run mean
- 16.2
- Cheapest month
- 5.3 · Dec 1917
- Richest month
- 123.7 · May 2009
Historical series: price ÷ trailing 12-month as-reported earnings — Robert Shiller's data through Jul 2023, then our own aggregate of members' SEC-filed earnings, continuous to Sep 2026; spikes above 50 (collapsed recession earnings, e.g. 2009's 123.7) are clipped for readability. The dashed green line is today's value, the same figure the valuation bands divide by.
The same history as a distribution
Every month since 1871, binned by its P/E — the green bin is where today sits (hover a bar for its count and example periods).
Where members trade: P/E distribution#
One number hides the spread. For each trailing-P/E range: the thick bar is the share of index weight, the thin bar the share of members — where they diverge, that range is dominated by a few giants (or a crowd of small names).
"n/a" = loss-making members or no earnings data. Tickers are each range's largest members (hover for the exact P/E). 97.6% of tracked index weight has a valid trailing P/E.
Every member on one map#
The same 500 members as a treemap: sized by market cap, grouped by sector, colored by trailing P/E rank within the index — so you can see WHERE the cheap and expensive pockets sit. Click a tile for the company's quote page, or open the full heatmap to switch universes and metrics (P/S, P/B, P/FCF, valuation percentiles).
FAQ#
- What is the P/E ratio of the S&P 500?
- The S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio is currently about 25.9 on trailing 12-month earnings — the combined market value of every member divided by their combined SEC-filed profits.
- Is the S&P 500's P/E high right now?
- At 25.9, the index trades richer than 93.3% of all months since 1871 (long-run median 15.1). High multiples have historically meant lower long-run forward returns, but the P/E alone has little power over 1-year horizons.
- How is the index P/E calculated?
- Total market capitalisation of the members divided by their total trailing-twelve-month net income — the aggregate, which is what an index P/E means and the only version that is additive: a sector's contribution is a share of one sum. Earnings come from our SEC EDGAR pipeline (TTM as filed), so companies that lost money subtract from the total rather than being quietly dropped, and the number reconciles exactly with the $2.66T on our S&P 500 earnings page — multiply this P/E by those earnings and you get the index's market value back. Every page on this site that divides by earnings uses this same figure. The alternative you will see on fund factsheets — the weighted harmonic mean of members' own P/Es (24.9 for this basket) — answers a different question: it excludes loss-makers and anything outside 3–1000×, and weights by float-adjusted index weight.
Notes & related#
Current values are computed bottom-up: index weights from the tracking fund's SEC N-PORT filing (rolled forward daily by price), member earnings from our SEC EDGAR pipeline (TTM, as filed; Twelve Data fallback where a filing hasn't landed yet), refreshed with each market close. We do not publish a forward P/E: analyst consensus is stated on ADJUSTED earnings, which add back write-offs and acquisition amortisation, while every figure here is net income as filed — Broadcom alone carries $6.01 of trailing GAAP earnings per share against a $19.63 consensus. Set the two side by side and the multiple appears to compress by a third on expected growth that is mostly an accounting basis change. The historical chart uses Robert Shiller's long-run series (as-reported earnings), so the two methodologies differ slightly where they meet. For the cyclically adjusted version, see the Shiller P/E (CAPE); for who's in the index at what weight, the full constituents list; for the cheapest large caps, value stocks. Not investment advice.
ChartRow is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, S&P Global, or Nasdaq, Inc. "S&P 500®" and "Dow Jones®" are registered trademarks of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC; "Nasdaq-100®" is a registered trademark of Nasdaq, Inc. They are used here only to identify the indexes discussed. All index-related figures on this page are independently derived from public sources — SEC filings, Robert Shiller's public dataset, and our own computations — not from any index provider's data feed.