ROI Calculator
Most people measure a position by comparing the buy price to the sell price. That is not the return, it leaves out the dividends you received and the costs you paid.
The position
Works for a closed position, or use today’s price to check one you still hold.
Add up every dividend across the whole holding period. Leaving this out is the most common way people understate a PSX return.
Commission on both the buy and the sell, plus any charges your broker passed through.
Used for the annualised figure.
Total return
+41.5%
Profit of PKR 41,500 on PKR 100,000 invested.
- Annualised
- +19.0%
- Price change alone
- +35.0%
Where the return came from
- Capital gain
- PKR 35,000
- Dividends received
- PKR 8,000
- Transaction costs
- −PKR 1,500
- Net profit
- PKR 41,500
Dividends contributed 19% of your net profit here. This is why comparing only entry and exit prices understates what a PSX holding actually did for you.
This measures a realised return before tax. Capital gains tax and the tax already deducted from dividends are not included. Add them for a true after-tax figure. Past returns on one position tell you nothing about future ones.
Reading the result
Two numbers matter more than the headline.
The annualised figure
A 40% total return sounds identical whether it took one year or seven. It is not remotely the same thing. The annualised figure converts any holding period into a yearly rate, which is the only way to compare positions honestly, or to compare them against what you would have earned leaving the money somewhere safe.
That comparison is the useful one, and it is uncomfortable more often than people expect. In periods when government instruments have offered high yields, a great many equity positions have quietly underperformed the risk-free alternative.
The dividend share
For a long-held PSX position, dividends frequently account for a substantial portion of the total return. Measuring only the price change systematically understates what your holdings actually did, sometimes dramatically, on the kind of established dividend-paying company a beginner should be looking at in the first place.
What this deliberately leaves out
Tax. Capital gains tax on the sale and the tax already deducted from your dividends both reduce what you kept. Rates change between budgets, so rather than embedding a figure that will go stale, we leave it to you, subtract the tax you actually paid, and you have the real after-tax return.
It also ignores inflation. A 12% nominal return in a year of high inflation may be a real loss in purchasing power. Worth calculating occasionally, if only to keep the nominal figures in perspective.
Use it on positions you still hold
Enter today’s price as the sell price and it tells you what the position has returned so far. Doing this quarterly across your portfolio, alongside the sell framework, is most of what a portfolio review actually consists of.
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