Market capitalization shows marketplace value, not a company’s true value. Comparing market caps when investing can help you make smarter decisions.

Brokerage firms and advisors may give you information on investment results. But in many cases, these numbers aren’t personalized to your portfolio or tell an incomplete story, giving you overall returns but not annualized ones. You can easily calculate your annual investment returns using IRR functions in Excel. Here’s what to know and how to set up the spreadsheet to get started.