Calculate total return, CAGR, and inflation-adjusted real return on any stock position. Include dividends for an accurate picture of your investment performance.
—
| Year | Share Price | Position Value | Dividends (yr) | Cumulative Divs | Total Return % | Real Return % |
|---|
Enter your buy price per share, the current or sell price, number of shares, total dividends received over the holding period, and how long you've held the position. The calculator will show your total return, compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and inflation-adjusted real return, along with a year-by-year breakdown of how your position grew.
Price return measures only the change in share price. Total return adds dividends received to that capital gain. For dividend-paying stocks like those in the S&P 500, dividends can account for 30-50% of total return over a 10-year holding period. Always use total return when evaluating investment performance — price-only figures significantly understate the actual gain for dividend-paying stocks.
CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) tells you the equivalent steady annual return that would have produced your actual result. A 100% total return over 10 years is a 7.2% CAGR — very different from 100% over 3 years (26% CAGR). CAGR is the correct metric for comparing investments held over different time periods, and it's the benchmark used by professional investors when assessing performance against the S&P 500 or other indices.
A 10% nominal return in a year with 3% inflation delivers only a 6.8% real return in purchasing power terms. Over 10 years, $10,000 that grows to $25,937 at 10% nominal becomes worth only $19,277 in today's dollars at 3% inflation — a real return of 6.7% annually. For retirement planning, always evaluate returns in real (inflation-adjusted) terms to understand what your money will actually be worth when you need it.
Use your CAGR to benchmark against the S&P 500. If the S&P 500 returned 11% annually over the same period you held an individual stock, you need a CAGR above 11% to justify the concentration risk of a single-stock position. Most actively managed portfolios and individual stock pickers underperform the index after fees over 10+ year periods. If your CAGR is below the index CAGR for the same period, a low-cost index fund would have served you better.