Annualized Total Return

  

Well, when you invest a dollar…you hope or even expect to get more than a dollar back. At some point. And let’s say you invested that dollar in Terminator's Closet, a leading dealer in cybernetic body enhancements. And let's say it went from $1 a share to a dollar ten…6 months later.

Nice return. You made 10 percent in just 6 months. But in most investing discussions, investment returns are discussed in the form of annual returns...not monthly or daily or bi-annual numbers.

So you need to convert your 6-month return into an annualized one. You can do the process here of imputing those numbers: that is, if you made 10 percent in SIX months…then in a year, presumably, you could notion that you’d have made 20 percent.

It’s not that you are guaranteed to make 20 percent...it's just the math saying that IF YOU HAD COMPOUNDED AT THAT RATE, then you’d have made 20 percent.

So what if you made 10 percent in a month? The stock went from a buck a share Jan. 1 to a buck 10 a share by Feb. 1? Using the same math, that month's gain of 10 percent would carry a compound rate of 120 percent on an annualized basis, meaning that at that rate you are more than doubling your money on an annualized return basis.

And that's more than enough dough to keep Terminator's Closet popping out those Wi-Fi-enabled contact lenses faster than people can wear 'em.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are Revenues?73 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop what are revenues? well revenues are this magical thing.

00:08

they happen when you sell stuff from your business. 14 opera singing [man shrugs]

00:13

Teddy bears, forty bucks each five hundred sixty dollars. total nine custom-built

00:18

Japanese body pillows eighty bucks each seven hundred twenty dollars total. a

00:23

business so weird you can't tell your family and friends about it? [man peeks from behind a door]

00:28

priceless. revenues are what Wall Street analysts call top-line. because on an

00:33

income statement shows up right here. seems simple right? but from an

00:37

accounting perspective revenues get recognized in different ways. like let's [accounting document shown.]

00:42

say you sell a season pass to a golf course for five hundred bucks. on this

00:46

golf course happens to be somewhere in the Arctic Circle so the season is only

00:51

five months long. unless you like playing in the snow and stressing about hungry

00:56

polar bears and are basically a complete idiot. so the customer pays you five [man golfs in the snow]

01:00

hundred bucks up front to play as much as they want on your course. you made the

01:05

sale of five hundred dollars on May 1st, the first day of the season, but are

01:11

those all recognized as revenues that day? well it depends if there is no [definitions on screen]

01:16

money-back guarantee and you keep the five hundred bucks no matter what, well

01:20

then maybe yeah. you can recognize all of those revenues then upfront and you're

01:24

done. but what if there's a fine print that [man and woman exchange documents]

01:27

says if you play zero times in a month well you don't have to pay for that

01:32

month and you get a refund at the end of the season in October.

01:37

well you can't recognize the revenue upfront now, at least not all of it. [ATM machine]

01:41

instead you can recognize a hundred dollars worth of revenues each time

01:45

someone clearly plays on your course. ie even one round of golf confirms that

01:51

they have used the hundred dollar all-you-can-eat in a month deal on your

01:56

course. you can imagine then that well you have to reserve some kind of money [man drives golf cart]

02:01

back refund set of payments when the season is over and you just have to

02:05

track every single season and pass fires progress on your golf course. all right

02:09

well the key idea here is that revenues don't necessarily equal sales,

02:13

and that recognizing revenues usually entails that the revenues are [man smiles from golf course]

02:18

irrevocable. that is they have passed their money-back guarantee period and

02:22

will remain in your little piggy bank until next season. and what do you do

02:26

with all those revenues? well ever hear of polar bear repellent? yeah will do [people run from polar bear]

02:31

wonders for customer retention rates.

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