How to Use IRR to Evaluate Investment Performance

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.

Stock Splits: What They Are, Why They Matter

There’s some mystery surrounding stock splits (and reverse splits). But they’re really simple. This simplicity may confuse people who are looking for deeper meaning. So, let’s dive into what splits are, why they’re done, what they mean to investors, and more.

How I Find Beauty in a Balance Sheet

When I’m evaluating a company and its stock, one of the places I look is the company’s balance sheet. A great balance sheet is beautiful to me. It either attracts me to a company and its management or repels me. Let’s delve into how this essential financial statement can hold beauty.

The White Coat Investor Book Review

Earning a high income doesn’t automatically translate into high net worth. In some cases, high earners simply spend more and end up with fewer assets than more moderate earners. This problem can be especially true of physicians, which often targets of unsavory financial professionals. Are you a medical resident or physician? Then you could benefit from reading The White Coat Investor by James M. Dahle, MD. Check out my review here.

What Not to Buy When Investing

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been updating my portfolio. The good news is that I locked in a gain with NVDA by selling 100 of my shares for $212 per share, which I had bought at an average price of $25 about two years ago. The bad news is that I lost money on other investments. To follow Warren Buffett’s rule of investing (“don’t lose money”), you’ll need to determine what not to buy. Honed from my experience, here’s a short list.