Return

The gain or loss on an investment, usually expressed as a percentage of what was put in.

Example

Buying at $100 and selling at $110 is a 10% return before fees and tax.

Important

A return is only real once it is realised or measured against inflation - an unrealised gain can shrink or vanish before you ever collect it.

Related terms

• Nominal return — An investment's return in raw currency terms, before adjusting for inflation.
• Real return — An investment's return after subtracting inflation - what you actually gained in purchasing power.
• CAGR (compound annual growth rate) — The single steady annual growth rate that would take a starting value to an ending value over a given number of years.

Lessons that explain it

• What investing actually is — Investing is putting money at risk today in exchange for more of it later. Everything else in this Academy is detail on top of that one trade. (9 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary