You need money to make money in the stock market. While everyone would love to invest in the next hot growth stock and for a $1,000 investment to grow to 100 times that value, it’s not a scenario that happens all that often. And investments that have a lot of potential upside often carry significant risk.

If you want to earn a sizable return without taking on a lot of risk, then you’ll need to save and invest more money. By having a large lump sum to invest, that means you’ll be generating larger gains right from the start.

Could investing $50,000 into the stock market today be enough to build up a $1 million portfolio by the time you retire? And what should you consider investing in if you have that much money, to ensure you aren’t putting it at risk? I’ll aim to answer both those questions below.

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How can you safely invest in the stock market?

Fund managers and financial professionals who collect investing fees will have an incentive to convince you that investing in the stock market is too difficult. But the reality is that it’s incredibly easy to make money in it. The biggest challenge is simply not to get caught up in the hype around meme stocks or risky cryptocurrencies. They sound exciting, but investing in them can lead to significant losses.

The tried-and-true way of making money in the market is by tracking the S&P 500, and that can be done by buying an exchange-traded fund (ETF). With the S&P 500, you get exposure to the best stocks in the world. The index includes big-name tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple, and it also gives you exposure to top retailers including Walmart and Costco Wholesale, plus many other solid blue-chip stocks. These are safe companies to invest in, and rather than picking the stocks yourself, you can just invest in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY 0.22%) or other similar S&P 500 ETFs.

Can a $50,000 investment in the S&P 500 make you a millionaire?

On average, the S&P 500 has risen by around 10% per year. If it were to continue at that rate, then after 10 years, an investment in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF will have increased by around 160%. And after 25 years, it will have grown to nearly 11 times its original value. Compounded returns are what make long-term investing an incredibly appealing strategy to deploy. You simply leave your investment alone and watch it grow.

There will inevitably be down years and the S&P 500 might average a slower growth rate in the future. It is, after all, trading at record levels. Plus, with the economy facing uncertainty due to tariffs, there is some near-term risk to consider. That’s why over the longer term, I think the S&P 500 will average a lower annual growth rate, perhaps somewhere between 8% and 10%. I’ve built the following table based on that range, to show what a $50,000 investment could be worth in the future, depending on what the average annual return ends up being.

Calculations by author.

It is possible for a $50,000 investment to grow to $1 million, but it will likely take at least 35 years before that happens, and that is assuming the S&P 500’s growth rate is at least 9%. If you’ll retire before then and want to get to $1 million quicker, then you can accelerate these gains by periodically adding to your investment over the years.