Posts on investing have been core to the site since the beginning. Investing is intimately connected to net worth, as it can earn you income passively while you work your own day job.
On this page, you'll find return calculators for individual equities as well as indices, funds, and commodities. You'll discover valuation tools and indicators. And finally, you'll encounter definitions, commentary, and answers clarifying some mysteries of investing.
It's surprisingly hard to find historical market returns on various securities, indices, and commodities. In these posts, we've tracked down market data sources and provided investment history in an easy to use form. Where appropriate, these tools also include the effects of dividend and coupon reinvestment – and often inflation as well.
These posts track the historical return of individual securities. If you're looking to estimate how an ADR, stock, Exchange Traded Fund, or Closed End Fund performed over a given time-frame, start here. These tools include the effects of reinvested coupon payments and dividends.
When you look at the price return of an index, you're missing the accumulated (and significant) effect of reinvested dividends or coupons. These tools compute the historical total return of various stock and bond indices.
Commodities and cryptocurrencies all have a value as well – the market-clearing price traders where traders agree. These posts look at the historical returns of litecoin, bitcoin, and various commodities, including optional inflation adjustment.
Fundamental to investing is the concept of value – "if I sold this today, what would it be worth?". Whether you're computing discounted cash flows or theoretical yields, this section is for you. Have fun with valuation tools for bonds, stocks, funds, markets... and even gambling.
Unlike bonds, modeling index valuation is more art than science. These measures attempt to build a rough model of a company, index, or company stock market's intrinsic value to guess whether it's appropriate to invest.
Bonds and fixed income securities are straightforward to model. These posts contain tools to value bonds based on the present value of their cash flows, teach the backing formulas, and show where the models can break down.
In theory, an investment's value is the present value of its future cash flows. In practice? It's whatever someone will pay.
These calculators help you with the theory, if not the edges of the practice. Use these value stocks, bonds, and anything with a revenue stream. Or, use these tools to assist in placing bets or allocating a portfolio.
These posts are retrospective looks at past returns on an index, commodity, or cryptocurrency. Beyond a typical return report, they include a discussion of total return, including dividend reinvestment.
Find more years in the Investment Return Archives
Our take on investing research & interesting questions.
