Your portfolio grew. Did your investments?

📈 You started with 10,000. Now you have 12,000. A 20% gain?

But you added another 3,000 along the way. If everything is measured in one currency, with no withdrawals or payouts outside the portfolio, the result for the period is a loss of 1,000. Contributions made the total bigger even though the investments lost value.

The reverse can happen too: you withdraw some money, the balance falls, yet your investments have made a profit.

With stocks, bonds and crypto, it helps to separate what you put in and took out, what your assets are worth now, and what the investments earned or lost. Dividends, interest payments and fees matter too. Calculating a percentage return also depends on when contributions and withdrawals happened.

A bigger portfolio can mean you saved more. That is progress too—just a different kind.

Do you watch the total balance, or separately check what your investments earned?

#JAB47