Total Return vs. Price Return
Price return counts only the share price. Total return adds dividends back in. The gap between them is bigger than most investors expect over time.
Price return measures only what the share price did. Total return adds in the dividends you received along the way. For a holding that pays nothing, they are identical. For one that does, the gap compounds — and it is almost always the price return that gets quoted.
The two figures
Price return is the simple one:
price return = (end price − start price) ÷ start price
Total return puts the income back:
total return = (end price − start price + dividends) ÷ start price
That is the whole difference. It sounds minor for a single year and stops sounding minor over ten.
You buy 100 shares at $50 ($5,000). A year later the price is $54, and the
holding paid $1.60 per share in dividends along the way.
- Price return:
($54 − $50) ÷ $50 = 8.0% - Dividends received:
100 × $1.60 = $160 - Total return:
($54 − $50 + $1.60) ÷ $50 = 11.2%
The holding "went up 8%". You actually made 11.2%.
Why it matters more than it sounds
The 3.2 percentage points in that example are one year. The reason people care about the distinction is what happens when the difference repeats.
It also cuts the other way. A holding whose price went nowhere while paying a steady dividend has a price return of roughly zero and a positive total return — so judging it on price alone makes a position that paid you look like one that did nothing.
Note
Index figures quoted in the news are usually price returns. When a chart says an index "returned" a number, check which one it means — the two versions of the same index diverge substantially over long periods.
Reinvested dividends complicate both
If you take dividends as cash, the arithmetic above is complete. If you reinvest them, each payment buys more shares at whatever the price was that day — which means your share count grows, and so does your cost basis.
This is where a hand-built tracker starts producing wrong numbers. The share count in the spreadsheet is the one you typed in; the dividends bought more shares months ago; the "price paid" cell never moved. The return it reports is neither price return nor total return — it is an artefact.
| What you are measuring | Needs |
|---|---|
| Price return | Start price, end price |
| Total return (cash dividends) | The above, plus dividends received |
| Total return (reinvested) | Every reinvestment as its own purchase |
Day, month, and since-purchase
The same distinction shows up at every timescale, which is why a portfolio view that reports one number is rarely enough. A day change tells you about today. A since-purchase figure tells you whether the decision to buy has worked out. They answer different questions and neither substitutes for the other.
What makes them honest is measuring from what you actually paid rather than from a price you pasted in at some point. Unrealized gain or loss covers how that figure is built, and if you have bought the same holding more than once, the cost basis calculator works out the blended starting point.
StoxDeck shows gain and loss for the day, the month, or since you bought — all measured from real cost basis. Build your first deck →