performance reports

[reddragon]

I have one stock in a portfolio that when I do a performance report the return is showing as
Eaton Corp
0.00 6,145.62 5,030.96 453.00 4,001.00 3,339.34 504.69 N.A.

504% as you can see above. my initial puchase was 100 shares back in late 2009 and then the stock ran up almost 100% and split 2 for 1 just before the split I sold 50 shares which has left me with 100 shares after split. I just can not get the data entry correct to get rid of the 504% return. Any suggestions what it may be?

[Mark]

Hi reddragon,

I assume this is from a Portfolio Performance report and those fields are the default fields of this report?

The 504% number is a %Gain. %Gain is not time/money weighted, and can sometimes be misleading because of this. For this time period you paid 6154.62, sold 5030.96 and took 453 in distributions. Is this all correct? If not, check how your transactions are recorded. If this is correct this means you had a remaining out of pocket cost for the shares owned on the ending report date of 6154.62 - 5030.96 - 453 = 661.66. Since your shares are still worth 4001, you have a gain on this OOP cost basis of 3339.34. The %Gain is 3339.34 / 661.66 = 504%. What is happening here is you took out the majority of what you put in, but it is still worth quite a bit more than your OOP cost basis, thus the high %Gain.

%Gain is a simple equation, and is not time or money weighted. For a better performance metric use the Yield column (showing N.A. in your report). The ROI yield field is time and money weighted. A likely reason why the ROI is showing as NA here is I'm guessing your report starts on a date before you made your first purchase. By default ROI yields only report for time periods where you own shares over the full period of the yield term. See "Options / Yield Interpolation Range...". You can press the "Help..." button in this dialog for a detailed explanation of how/when yields are calculated.