How to measure investment performance

One major factor in any investor’s decision to hold or sell an investment is often the performance of the stock or fund—aka how it’s doing. Is it growing over time?

To help you assess how your investments are doing, the Plynk app shows a couple different performance figures: your investment rate of return and market comparisons.

Investment rate of return

Once you’ve invested at least $10 in your brokerage account, you’ll see what's called your "Investment change" on the Portfolio screen.

This number shows your “investment rate of return.” It’s the growth or decline in the value of all your investments combined (including any interest or dividends you earned).*

Rate of return is shown as a percentage, which can be positive or negative depending on how your investments performed during a given time period. It will likely fluctuate over time, so you might see different percentages for different time periods.

For example, if your investment change says +8.20% for the 1-month period, but -3.50% for the 1-year period, it means the value of your investments increased 8.20% over the last month but has overall declined by 3.50% over the last year.

Market comparisons

On each stock or fund’s details screen (in a section labeled “Growth”), you can see a comparison between the rate of return of that particular investment and the average market return.

The Plynk app uses the S&P 500 market index as a guide for the stock market as a whole, so you’ll be able to see whether that individual investment has performed better or worse than the stock market average.

For example, it may read something like "BIG CORP’s growth of 12% over the past year has been less than the market average of 18%."

Of course, the S&P 500 is just one benchmark that you can use to compare. You may also find it helpful to compare your stock or fund’s performance to other market indexes related to its sector, region, size, etc. For index funds specifically, you can easily compare their performance against the performance of the market index that they mimic.

Next steps to consider

The Plynk app also offers expert ratings for stocks and funds that may help you feel more confident in your investing decisions. Check out the Discover page to browse investments categorized by themes that might appeal to you.

You can make it easier to put aside money to invest by setting up recurring deposits, and give your investments more opportunity to grow with automatic investing.