Investment ROI Calculator
Calculate total return, annualized CAGR, and profit or loss on any investment.
Total ROI
+50.00%
Total Profit / Loss
$5,000.00
Total ROI
+50.00%
Annualized ROI (CAGR)
+14.47%
How to Use This Investment ROI Calculator
1. Enter Your Initial Investment. Enter what you originally put in — your true cost basis, including any fees or costs to acquire the investment.
2. Enter the Final Value. Enter what the investment is worth now, or what you sold it for. This works the same whether the number is higher than your initial investment (a gain) or lower (a loss).
3. Enter the Investment Period (optional). Enter how many years you held the investment if you want an annualized figure. This turns your total return into a CAGR, which is what makes it comparable to investments held for a different length of time.
4. Read Your Results. Total ROI shows your percentage gain or loss relative to what you put in. Total Profit/Loss shows the actual dollar amount. Annualized ROI (CAGR) shows what that return works out to on a per-year basis — useful for comparing two investments you held for different lengths of time.
Diego invested $10,000 in a stock that's now worth $6,000. Plugging those numbers in, Total ROI comes back at -40%, with a Total Profit/Loss of -$4,000. Instead of just noting the loss, Diego runs a second calculation: he enters $6,000 as the Initial Investment and $10,000 as the Final Value, to see what it would actually take to get back to where he started. The result surprises him — a 66.7% gain, not 40%. He'd assumed a 40% gain would undo a 40% loss, but the calculator makes clear that recovering from a smaller balance takes a proportionally bigger percentage gain. With that number in mind, Diego reframes his expectations: it's not a quick bounce-back he's waiting on, but a meaningfully larger climb than the drop that got him here.
Key Terms
Initial Investment
What you originally put into an investment, including any purchase costs. This is the baseline every other number in the calculator is measured against.
Final Value
What the investment is worth now, or what you received when you sold it. This can be higher or lower than your Initial Investment — the calculator handles both the same way.
Total ROI
Your percentage gain or loss, calculated as (Final Value − Initial Investment) ÷ Initial Investment × 100.
Annualized ROI (CAGR)
Short for Compound Annual Growth Rate, this spreads your total return evenly across however many years you held the investment, making it possible to fairly compare investments held for different lengths of time.
Break-Even Gain
The percentage gain needed to bring a reduced balance back to its original value after a loss. Because losses shrink the base you're growing from, this number is always larger than the percentage you originally lost.
Why a 40% Loss Needs a 67% Gain Just to Break Even
It feels like basic math: lose 40%, gain 40% back, you're even again. That's not how it actually works, and the gap between those two numbers gets more dramatic the bigger the loss.
The Math Behind the Gap
A loss shrinks the balance you're recovering from, so the percentage needed to climb back is always bigger than the percentage that got you there. A $10,000 investment that drops 40% leaves you with $6,000 — and getting from $6,000 back to $10,000 requires a 66.7% gain, not 40%. The same pattern holds at every level: a 20% loss needs a 25% gain to recover, and a 50% loss needs a full 100% gain, doubling your remaining money just to get back to zero.
Why This Gets Worse, Not Better, as Losses Grow
The relationship isn't linear — it accelerates. Run the numbers for a 60% loss and you'll need a 150% gain to recover. At 80%, you're looking at a 400% gain. Small losses are forgiving; large ones compound against you in a way that makes "just wait for it to bounce back" a much bigger ask than it sounds.
What This Means for How You Handle a Drawdown
This is the real argument for keeping losses small in the first place, rather than counting on an equally large recovery. Before assuming a 30% drop will undo itself with a 30% rebound, run both numbers through this calculator — the Initial Investment and Final Value fields work exactly the same in reverse, showing you precisely what climb is actually ahead of you.