If you only bought one stock a year and bought it on the 1 st of the year and sold it on the 1 st the next year, it'd be really easy to track your gains using 4 th grade math (or 3 rd grade math if you went to a really foofy pre-school). But since we don't trade that way, simple math doesn't work. Calculating gains may sound easy until you start to think about all the factors involved:
- How do you value stocks you still own, compared to stocks you sold six months ago, but must still include in your gain calculations?
- How do you weight 10 shares of BRKA to 100 shares of MSFT?
- How do you weight a stock you owned for 18 months to a stock you've owned for two weeks?
- How do you account for dividends?
- Why is my head starting to hurt?
http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=970
- How do you value stocks you still own, compared to stocks you sold six months ago, but must still include in your gain calculations?
- How do you weight 10 shares of BRKA to 100 shares of MSFT?
- How do you weight a stock you owned for 18 months to a stock you've owned for two weeks?
- How do you account for dividends?
- Why is my head starting to hurt?
http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=970
