buyupside.com Stock Return/Purchase Date Calculator

The returns (profits and losses) for buy-and-hold investors have been on a roller coaster ride since prices peaked in 2000 and 2007. To see how buy-and-hold investing has performed during this and other investing periods, use the buyupside.com Stock Return/Purchase Date Calculator.

The calculator displays a chart of percent returns for a selected period for a given stock highlighting the profitable investment dates in green and the unprofitable ones in red. See chart examples.

The chart shows the percent return of each buy-and-hold investment for a period of purchase dates that you specify on the input form below. The percent return for each purchase date is computed using the following formula:

Percent return (%) = ((Today's closing price - Closing price of purchase date) / Closing price of purchase date ) * 100

The calculator assumes that the stock has been held since the purchase date so the percent return is valued as of today's closing price.

All prices are taken from from Yahoo! Finance.

Today's date: Mar-20-2010.