In an earlier post, I mentioned that I use XIRR as one of the metrics for measuring the individual stocks performance in my portfolio.  In simple terms, XIRR is the interest rate you would need to make the same money from any interest bearing account (with same investments). While XIRR can be extended at portfolio level, in today’s post, I am only discussing how I use XIRR at individual stock level.

I have pulled out one excel sheet [copy is in my toolbox at TIP-Stock-Tracker] as a representative example for this discussion. The primary notion behind this excel sheet is to keep records and track the performance. It is not intended “to model an automated tracker” or “to perform any automated calculation across the board”. Except XIRR, I have used only few basic math formulas like addition, subtraction, divisions, multiplication, and percentages. In order to understand the formula, I suggest to use formula auditing tool bar (which will show arrows to linked cells) to understand the formulas. This excel is segregated into different regions.

• Stock’s Pricing: The area from cell D2 to cell E9 is an automated data imports from excel. In cell E2, I have used web query function. When this cell is refreshed, it imports data from yahoo finance website. Select the cell E2 >> right click >> Edit Web Query. It will show you the address and how the data is being imported.
• Purchase/Dividends: The next is area from cell A12 to cell I25 where I input all my purchases and dividend received during the holding period. As you can see, I use red colored font for all my purchases (because cash goes out) and colored font for any cash received (because cash is coming in).
• Cumulative Current Holdings: The status of my total holdings on “cost basis” is shown in area from cell K12 to M26.
• Yearly dividends and YOC: The area from cell O12 to cell Q26 keeps track of the year dividends and yield-on-cost for my investments.
• Current Status: This area from cell S12 to cell T26 provides the current status, i.e. total value of my stock holding. In includes actual value [number of shares x today’s stock’s price] and corresponding profit or loss.
• Summary: The area from S2 to V8, with black background and white color fonts is the overall summary of this particular stock investment.

Calculating XIRR

Go to cell V8, and press [F2]. It will show the formula =XIRR (V14:V26,A14:A26). The syntax for this formula is as follows:

XIRR(values, dates, guess)

• Values: It is the series of cash flows with purchase (negative) values of the stocks, selling of stocks (positives), and dividends (positives). Please note: one can flip the negative and positives signs with purchase being positive and vice-a-versa. The results does not get affected.
• Dates: The date associated with those purchases, sellers, and dividends.
• Guess: It is supposed to the best guess value. It helps to speed up the calculation by starting the iterative process from that point onwards. It is an optional data point. If you do not include it, it does not affect the results.

Cell V8 shows the life-to-date XIRR. If you want to play around then try changing dates, or dividend values, or add purchases, or add sellers, etc and you can observed the changes in XIRR.

In this example, you can see, as earnings at NTPC have grown, my yield has also grown with it. In another four years, my yield will exceed any savings or FD account.

This is only for one stock. I will leave it to readers to extrapolate this at portfolio level. Sometime in future, I may also provide a similar excel sheet for portfolio tracking. I just need to figure out the write up for explanation.