Numbers: Trying to find historical data as a percentage

BVD,

I tried to edit my post below to include a comment I found in a Motley article about overall return from Purchase to Sale. This site refused my edit attempt because it was busy, or tired, or something.

Anyway, their point was that if the stock pays dividends, the dividends should be incorporated in the gain calculation, making the calculation drastically more difficult for the average Joe. My thought was that incorporating the dividends is something that would make a large enough difference that it could lead to the sort of discrepancy you noted above.

Jerry

The figure including any dividends is called "total return." Morningstar and other sites show that.

For annualized price-only appreciation use:

(Ending value/beginning value)^(1+n)-1

Where n is the number of years.

SG

It seems likely that you have not yet accounted for stock splits.

SG

BVD,

It's difficult to say what you are doing there, not seeing your work. Here's my calculation, using your figures from the original post above:

The expression I used is the accepted one for sales gain. As for the splits, here's the record as of today's Yahoo Finance:

Regards,

Jerry

Keep in mind that the absolute percentage increase over such a long period of time is essentially meaningless.

More meaningful is an annualized rate of return.

SG