Calculating annual percentage returns

[Benjamin]

I've spent hours this afternoon on Google looking for a calculator that will historically calculate what an average percentage rate of return has been, given the following information.

1. Amount of initial investment

2. Date of initial investment

3. Value of investment today

4. Today's date

The answer required is the average percentage annual return (or loss)  on the original investment. 3. and 4. may not neccesarily be "today" but could be any date since the original date.

Google serves me quite well normally and I don't know of any other search engines which may give better results.

Many thanks if anyone knows of an online calculator which I promise to bookmark for the future.

Benjamin

[Cassis]

Have you got Excel or any other spreadsheet package on your 'puter?  It's a simple formula if you have.  I can email you the formula in Excel which you should then be able to import into another spreadsheet package, if you like.

[Benjamin]

Never thought of that Cassis. I do very little with spread sheets. Maybe I should get out a bit more.

Thank you.

Benjamin

[Cassis]

Type in the following text on your spreadsheet:

In the top left box A1   Date of investment

In A2                           Amount

invested

In A3                           Current

date

In A4                           Current value

In A5                           APR

LEAVE COLUMN B BLANK.

Now in column C enter your values. 

Enter the date of investment in the form 01/01/06 in box C1 (dd/mm/yy).  Format the cell to be a date.

Enter the initial value in C2.

Enter the current (or whatever) date in C3 as for C1 and format it to be a date.

Enter the current value in C4.

Copy and enter this formula in C5    =((C4-C2)/C2)/((C3-C1)/365) and format the cell to be a percentage.

That should do it - to test, enter simple values like 01/01/06, 1000, 31/12/06, 1100 in cells C1-4 and the value in C5 should pop up as 10%.

[Benjamin]

That does it for me Cassis. Thank you.

Benjamin