Buy and Sell Return

A buy and sell percent return occurs when an investment is purchased on a given date and time and then sold on another date and time. The interval between the purchase and sale can be any unit of time.

A buy and sell percent return is a profit, loss or break-even.

Percent Return = ((buy price - sell price) / buy price) * 100.

The formula used to compute the number of percent returns for a series of N prices is:

N*(N-1)/2

Example

For 100 prices the total number of percent returns is 100 * (99 /2) = 4,950.