Investors need to understand profit and profit margins to be successful and grow. Your profit is the sum of money you make from stock against the funds you’ve invested. It designates the funds left over after all your expenses are subtracted over a set period of time.
To calculate the profit margin, you need to add the total price paid for the stock to all the broker’s fees and commissions you paid to purchase and sell it. Then, multiply the number of shares sold by the sale price per share to find your total income from the sale.
Finally, subtract the basis of the cost from the total income to see what your stock profit is. It is not difficult to find the total percentage gain or loss on stock at all if you are familiar with the terminology.
Calculate Net Gain and Loss
To find the net gain or loss on stock, subtract the buying price from the current price. Then, the difference is divided by the buying prices of the asset.
Note that this is different from finding the daily return on your stock portfolio. A percentage gain in one security may not be the same as an equivalent percentage gain in another security because the stocks will usually have different buying prices. You won’t get an accurate measure of portfolio return just by adding the individual percentage returns.
Calculate the Percentage Return
You can calculate this number by adapting the above method of finding a stock’s return. Simply do your calculations based on the total stock portfolio value instead of using the stock’s buying price and current value. If your portfolio was valued at $13,000 on May 1 and its value rose to $14,000 after a month on the market, the percentage return on the stock portfolio for the month is 7.69% ([$14,000 – $13,000] / $13,000 x 100).
Differences in Profit Types for Companies
There are a few different types of profit for companies. Of these, we’ll discuss gross and net profit.
Gross Profit
Gross profit is a company’s total revenue minus the expenses of services or products sold by the company. This is the profit prior to deduction of interest and taxes.
Net Profit
The net profit is the amount of money that’s left after subtracting operating expenses from a company’s total revenue. Among the operating costs that need to be taken outage taxes, interest, and certain stock payments. In essence, net profit is the cash a company makes after business expenses and costs have been covered.
Profit Margin
The profit margin represents a company’s profitability, which is listed as a percent on the balance sheet. The higher this figure is, the more funds an investor or business is making after all costs are covered.
There are two kinds of profit margins –net and gross profit margin. A stock profit calculator can be very helpful in establishing these. In the absence of one, however, here’s how to calculate them.
A high net profit margin signals that an investor is going in the right direction and that his stock portfolio is growing healthily over a set period of time. For a company, this means its products or services are performing well on the market, again over a set period of time, normally a fiscal quarter (three months). On the other hand, a poor net margin normally signifies underlying issues such as poor portfolio management decisions, high fees, or (for companies) low service or product demand.
To calculate the net margin, divide your net income by your total sales, then multiply this number by 100.
You calculate the gross margin by subtracting the cost of products from net sales, then dividing the resulting figure into net sales to calculate the ratio representing the gross margin.
Any entity would benefit from using a stock profit calculator because the latter helps one understand profit. This could mean the difference between financial success and failure.
