258 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
258 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
roi\
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Shows the time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return
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on your investments.
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_FLAGS
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This command assumes that you have account(s) that hold nothing but
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your investments and whenever you record current appraisal/valuation
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of these investments you offset unrealized profit and loss into
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account(s) that, again, hold nothing but unrealized profit and loss.
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Any transactions affecting balance of investment account(s) and not
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originating from unrealized profit and loss account(s) are assumed to
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be your investments or withdrawals.
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At a minimum, you need to supply a query (which could be just an
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account name) to select your investments with `--inv`, and another
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query to identify your profit and loss transactions with `--pnl`.
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This command will compute and display the internalized rate of return (IRR) and
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time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your investments for the time
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period requested. Both rates of return are annualized before display,
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regardless of the length of reporting interval.
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Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:
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- Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
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Possible causes: IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of investment becomes negative at some point in time.
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- Error (SearchFailed): Failed to find solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
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Either search does not converge to a solution, or converges too slowly.
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Examples:
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- Using roi to report unrealised gains:
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https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/examples/roi-unrealised.ledger
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More background:
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"ROI" stands for "return on investment". Traditionally this was
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computed as a difference between current value of investment and its
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initial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.
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However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where
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investments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money, and where rate
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of growth is fixed over time. For more complex scenarios you need
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different ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements
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two of them: IRR and TWR.
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Internal rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate of
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return") takes into account effects of in-flows and out-flows.
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Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future
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gains would be smaller (in absolute numbers), and will be a smaller
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percentage of your initial investment, and if you are adding to your
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investment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but probably at
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the same rate of return). IRR is a way to compute rate of return for
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each period between in-flow or out-flow of money, and then combine
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them in a way that gives you an annual rate of return that investment
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is expected to generate.
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As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that you
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personally put in or withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are
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transactions that involve account(s) matching `--inv` argument and NOT
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involve account(s) matching `--pnl` argument.
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Presumably, you will also record changes in the value of your
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investment, and balance them against "profit and loss" (or "unrealized
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gains") account. Note that in order for IRR to compute the precise
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effect of your in-flows and out-flows on the rate of return, you will
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need to record the value of your investement on or close to the days
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when in- or out-flows occur.
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Implementation of IRR in hledger should match the `XIRR` formula in
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Excel.
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Second way to compute rate of return that `roi` command implements is
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called "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR". Like IRR, it will also
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break the history of your investment into periods between in-flows and
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out-flows to compute rate of return per each period and then a
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compound rate of return. However, internal workings of TWR are quite
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different.
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In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as computation of net
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present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net
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present value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to
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zero. This could be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't
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done discounted cash flow analysis before.
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TWR represents your investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in-flows/
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out-flows lead to buying or selling "units" of your investment and changes in
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its value change the value of "investment unit". Change in "unit price" over the
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reporting period gives you rate of return of your investment.
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References:
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* [Explanation of rate of return](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rateofreturn.asp)
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* [Explanation of IRR](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/irr.asp)
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* [Explanation of TWR](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/time-weightedror.asp)
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* [Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of the limitations of both metrics](https://blog.commonwealth.com/measuring-portfolio-performance-twr-vs.-irr)
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More examples:
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Lets say that we found an investment in Snake Oil that is proising to give us 10% annually:
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```hledger
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2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
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assets:cash -$100
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investment:snake oil
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2019-12-24 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil = $110
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equity:unrealized gains
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```
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For now, basic computation of the rate of return, as well as IRR and TWR, gives us the expected 10%:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+========+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 110 | 10 || 10.00% | 10.00% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+
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```
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However, lets say that shorty after investing in the Snake Oil we started to have second thoughs, so we prompty withdrew $90, leaving only $10 in.
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Before Christmas, though, we started to get the "fear of mission out", so we put the $90 back in. So for most of the year, our investment was just $10 dollars,
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and it gave us just $1 in growth:
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```hledger
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2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
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assets:cash -$100
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investment:snake oil
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2019-01-02 Buyers remorse
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assets:cash $90
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investment:snake oil
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2019-12-30 Fear of missing out
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assets:cash -$90
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investment:snake oil
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2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil = $101
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equity:unrealized gains
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```
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Now IRR and TWR are drastically different:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++=======+=======+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 101 | 1 || 9.32% | 1.00% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+
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```
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Here, IRR tells us that we made close to 10% on the $10 dollars that
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we had in the account most of the time. And TWR is ... just 1%? Why?
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Based on the transactions in our journal, TWR "think" that we are buying back $90 worst of Snake Oil
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at the same price that it had at the beginning of they year, and then after that our $100 investment
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gets $1 increase in value, or 1% of $100. Let's take a closer look at what is happening here by
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asking for quarterly reports instead of annual:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+=======+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% |
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| 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10 | 0 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% |
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| 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10 | 0 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% |
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| 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10 | 90 | 101 | 1 || 37.80% | 4.03% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+
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```
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Now both IRR and TWR are thrown off by the fact that all of the growth for our investment happens in
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Q4 2019. This happes because IRR computation is still yielding 9.32% and TWR is still 1%, but
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this time these are rates for three month period instead of twelve, so in order to get an annual rate
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they should be multiplied by four!
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Let's try to keep a better record of how Snake Oil grew in value:
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```hledger
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2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
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assets:cash -$100
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investment:snake oil
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2019-01-02 Buyers remorse
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assets:cash $90
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investment:snake oil
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2019-02-28 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil
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equity:unrealized gains -$0.25
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2019-06-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil
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equity:unrealized gains -$0.25
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2019-09-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil
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equity:unrealized gains -$0.25
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2019-12-30 Fear of missing out
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assets:cash -$90
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investment:snake oil
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2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
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investment:snake oil
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equity:unrealized gains -$0.25
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```
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Would our quartery report look better now? Almost:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10.25 | 0.25 || 9.53% | 10.53% |
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| 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10.25 | 0 | 10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% |
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| 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10.50 | 0 | 10.75 | 0.25 || 9.79% | 9.78% |
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| 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10.75 | 90 | 101.00 | 0.25 || 8.05% | 1.00% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
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```
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Something is still wrong with TWR computation for Q4, and if you have been paying attention you know
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what it is already: big $90 buy-back is recorded prior to the only transaction that captures the
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change of value of Snake Oil that happened in this time period. Lets combine transactions from 30th
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and 31st of Dec into one:
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```hledger
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2019-12-30 Fear of missing out and growth of Snake Oil
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assets:cash -$90
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investment:snake oil
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equity:unrealized gains -$0.25
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```
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Now growth of investment properly affects its price at the time of buy-back:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10.25 | 0.25 || 9.53% | 10.53% |
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| 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10.25 | 0 | 10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% |
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| 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10.50 | 0 | 10.75 | 0.25 || 9.79% | 9.78% |
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| 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10.75 | 90 | 101.00 | 0.25 || 8.05% | 9.57% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
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```
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And for annual report, TWR now reports the exact profitability of our investment:
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```
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$ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+
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| || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR |
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+===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++=======+========+
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| 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 101.00 | 1.00 || 9.32% | 10.00% |
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+---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+
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```
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