How to calculate a mutual fund's yield
If the expense ratio of the fund is 0.00% then yes.  However, if the fund has expenses of 1% then if the NAV of the fund is $10/share the expenses would cause you to see only $.002 a share and thus you'd have $.10 in total as the expenses first cut down the yield.
"To try and address your 'how'  it goes a bit like this. You need to first assess how your stuff is invested, if for example half is in stocks, and the other half is in bonds, then you will need to calculate a 'blended' rate for what are reasonable 'average return' for both. That might mean looking at the S&P500 or Russell 3000 for the stock portion, and some bond index for that portion, then 'blend the rates', in this case using a formula like this then compare the blended rate with the return in your IRA. It is generally a lot more useful to compare the various components of your total return separately, especially if you investing with a particular style such as 'agressive growth' or you are buying actual bonds and not a bond fund since most of the bond oriented indexes are for bond funds, which you can't really compare well with buying and holding bonds to maturity. Lets say your stock side was two mutual funds with different styles, one 'large cap' the other 'aggressive growth'.  In that case you might want to compare each one of those funds with an appropriate index such as those provided by Morningstar  If you find one of them is consistently below the average, you might want to consider finding an alternative fund who's manager has a better track record (bearing in mind that ""past performance...."") For me (maybe someone has a good suggestion here) bonds are the hard thing to judge.  The normal goal of actually owning bonds (as opposed to a fund) is to retain the entire principal value because there's no principal fluctuation if you hold the bond to maturity (as long as you choose well and the issuer doesn't default)   The actual value 'right now' of a bond (as in selling before maturity) and bond funds, goes up and down in an inverse relationship with interest rates.  That means the indexes for such things also go up and down a lot, so it's very hard to compare them to a bond you intend to hold to maturity. Also, for such a bond, there's not a lot of point to 'switch out' unless you are worried about the issuer defaulting.  If rates are up from what you are getting on your bonds, then you'll have to sell your bond at a discount, and all that happens is you'll end up holding a different bond that is worth less, but has higher interest (basically the net return is likely to be pretty much the same).  The better approach there is generally to 'ladder' your maturity dates so you get opportunities to reinvest at whatever the prevailing rates are, without having to sell at a discount..  anyway the point is that I'm not sure there's a lot of value to comparing return on the bond portion of an IRA unless it's invested in bond funds (which a lot of people wanting to preserve principal tend to avoid)" You can evaluate portfolio raw returns or risk adjusted returns. To evaluate raw returns, I would personally compute the total returns over the time period in question for both portfolios.  To compute total returns, split the time into a bunch of subperiods by the dates at which you contributed money.  Compute each subperiod return by dividing the value of the portfolio at the end of the subperiod (but before adding additional cash on that day) by the value at the beginning of the subperiod (after adding cash on that day).  Then multiply all these returns together.  Finally, subtract 1.  That's your total return. For the portfolio where you didn't add any money it's easy: just divide the end value by the beginning and subtract 1. Whichever has a higher return performed better. To compute risk adjusted returns, get the portfolio returns from both portfolios (daily or monthly) and use OLS to regress on a benchmark portfolio return (something like the S&P500).  The intercept of the regression is a measure of the risk-adjusted peformance of your portfolio.  Higher the better.  More sophisticated models will do multiple regression using a few benchmark portfolios at the same time. Thanks for the answer/comments! The time-based method was something we mooted and something I almost went with. But just to wrap this up, the method we settled on was this: Every time there is an entry or exit into the fund, we divvy out any unrealised market profits/losses according to each person's profit share (based on % of the asset purchased at buy-in) JUST BEFORE the entry/exit. These realised profits are then locked in for those particpants, and then the unrealised profits/loss counter starts at zero, we do a fresh recalculation of shareholding after the entry/exit, and then we start again. Hope this helps anyone with the same issue! Like others have said, mutual funds don't have an intraday NAV, but their ETF equivalents do. Use something like Yahoo Finance and search for the ETF.IV. For example VOO.IV. This will give you not the ETF price (which may be at a premium or discount), but the value of the underlying securities updated every 15 seconds. One way that is common is to show the value over time of an initial investment, say $10,000.  The advantage of this is that it doesn't show stock price at all, so handles splits well.  It can also take into account dividend reinvestment.  Fidelity uses this for their mutual funds, as can be seen here.  Another option would be to compute the stock price as if the split didn't happen.  So if a stock does a 2:1 split, you show double the actual price starting at that point. There are many ways to calculate the return, and every way will give you a different results in terms of a percentage-value. One way to always get something meaningful - count the cash. You had 977 (+ 31) and in the end you have 1.370, which means you have earned 363 dollars. But what is your return in terms of percentage? One way to look at it, is by pretending that it is a fund in which you invest 1 dollar. What is the fund worth in the beginning and in the end? The tricky part in your example is, you injected new capital into the equation. Initially you invested 977 dollars which later, in the second period became worth 1.473. You then sold off 200 shares for 950 dollars. Remember your portfolio is still worth 1.473, split between 950 in cash and 523 in Shares. So far so good - still easy to calculate return (1.473 / 977 -1 = 50.8% return). Now you buy share for 981 dollars, but you only had 950 in cash? We now need to consider 2 scenarios. Either you (or someone else) injected 31 dollars into the fund - or you actually had the 31 dollars in the fund to begin with. If you already had the cash in the fund to begin with, your initial investment is 1.008 and not 977 (977 in shares and 31 in cash). In the end the value of the fund is 1.370, which means your return is 1.370 / 1.007 = 36%. Consider if the 31 dollars was paid in to the fund by someone other than you. You will then need to recalculate how much you each own of the fund. Just before the injection, the fund was worth 950 in cash and 387 in stock (310 - 200 = 110 x 3.54) = 1.339 dollars - then 31 dollars are injected, bringing the value of the fund up to 1.370. The ownership of the fund is split with 1.339 / 1.370 = 97.8% of the value for the old capital and 2.2% for the new capital. If the value of the fund was to change from here, you could calculate the return for each investor individually by applying their share of the funds value respective to their investment. Because the value of the fund has not changed since the last period (bullet 3), the return on the original investment is (977 / 1.339 - 1 = 37.2%) and the return on the new capital is (31 / 31 = 0%). If you (and not someone else) injected the 31 dollar into the fund, you will need to calculate the weight of each share of capital in each period and get the average return for each period to get to a total return. In this specific case you will still get 37.2% return - but it gets even more comlex for each time you inject new capital. I'm not entirely sure about some of the details in your question, since I think you meant to use $10,000 as the value of the futures contract and $3 as the value of the underlying stock. Those numbers would make more sense. That being said, I can give you a simple example of how to calculate the profit and loss from a leveraged futures contract. For the sake of simplicity, I'll use a well-known futures contract: the E-mini S&P500 contract. Each E-mini is worth $50 times the value of the S&P 500 index and has a tick size of 0.25, so the minimum price change is 0.25 * $50 = $12.50.  Here's an example. Say the current value of the S&P500 is 1,600; the value of each contract is therefore $50 * 1,600 = $80,000. You purchase one contract on margin, with an initial margin requirement1 of 5%, or $4,000. If the S&P 500 index rises to 1,610, the value of your futures contract increases to $50 * 1,610 = $80,500. Once you return the 80,000 - 4,000 = $76,000 that you borrowed as leverage, your profit is 80,500 - 76,000 = $4,500.  Since you used $4,000 of your own funds as an initial margin, your profit, excluding commissions is 4,500 - 4,000 = $500, which is a 500/4000 = 12.5% return. If the index dropped to 1,580, the value of your futures contract decreases to $50 * 1,580 = $79,000. After you return the $76,000 in leverage, you're left with $3,000, or a net loss of (3,000 - 4000)/(4000) = -25%. The math illustrates why using leverage increases your risk, but also increases your potential for return. Consider the first scenario, in which the index increases to 1,610. If you had forgone using margin and spent $80,000 of your own funds, your profit would be (80,500 - 80,000) / 80000 = .625%. This is smaller than your leveraged profit by a factor of 20, the inverse of the margin requirement (.625% / .05 = 12.5%). In this case, the use of leverage dramatically increased your rate of return.  However, in the case of a decrease, you spent $80,000, but gained $79,000, for a loss of only 1.25%. This is 20 times smaller in magnitude than your negative return when using leverage. By forgoing leverage, you've decreased your opportunity for upside, but also decreased your downside risk. 1) For futures contracts, the margin requirements are set by the exchange, which is CME group, in the case of the E-mini. The 5% in my example is higher than the actual margin requirement, which is currently $3,850 USD per contract, but it keeps the numbers simple. Also note that CME group refers to the initial margin as the performance bond instead. Dividend yield is a tough thing to track because it's a moving target.  Dividends are paid periodically the yield is calculated based on the stock price when the dividend is declared (usually, though some services may update this more frequently).   I like to calculate my own dividend by annualizing the dividend payment divided by my cost basis per share.  As an example, say you have shares in X, Co.  X issues a quarterly dividend of $1 per share and the share price is $100; coincidentally this is the price at which you purchased your shares. But a few years goes by and now X issues it's quarterly dividend of $1.50 per share, and the share price is $160. However your shares only cost you $100. Your annual yield on X is 6%, not the published 3.75%.  All of this is to say that looking back on dividend yields is somewhat similar to nailing jello to the wall.  Do you look at actual dividends paid through the year divided by share price?  Do you look at the annualized dividend at the time of issue then average those?  The stock price will fluctuate, that will change the yield; depending on where you bought your stock, your actual yield will vary from the published amount as well. "A mutual fund's return or yield has nothing to do with what you receive from the mutual fund. The annual percentage return is simply the percentage increase (or decrease!) of the value of one share of the mutual fund from January 1 till December 31. The cash value of any distributions (dividend income, short-term capital gains,  long-term capital gains) might be reported separately or might be included in the annual return.  What you receive from the mutual fund is the distributions which you have the option of taking in cash (and spending on whatever you like, or investing elsewhere) or of re-investing into the fund without ever actually touching the money. Regardless of whether you take a distribution as cash or re-invest it in the mutual fund, that amount is taxable income in most jurisdictions. In the US, long-term capital gains are taxed at different (lower) rates than ordinary income, and I believe that long-term capital gains from mutual funds are not taxed at all in India. You are not taxed on the increase in the value of your investment caused by an increase in the share price over the year nor do you get deduct the ""loss"" if the share price declined over the year. It is only when you sell the mutual fund shares (back to the mutual fund company) that you have to pay taxes on the capital gains (if you sold for a higher price) or deduct the capital loss (if you sold for a lower price) than the purchase price of the shares. Be aware that different shares in the sale might have different purchase prices because they were bought at different times, and thus have different gains and losses.  So, how do you calculate your personal return from the mutual fund investment? If you have a money management program or a spreadsheet program, it can calculate your return for you. If you have online access to your mutual fund account on its website, it will most likely have a tool called something like ""Personal rate of return"" and this will provide you with the same calculations without your having to type in all the data by hand. Finally, If you want to do it personally by hand, I am sure that someone will soon post an answer writing out the gory details." "Google Docs spreadsheets have a function for filling in stock and fund prices.  You can use that data to graph (fund1 / fund2) over some time period. Syntax: =GoogleFinance(""symbol"", ""attribute"", ""start_date"", ""num_days|end_date"", ""interval"") where: This analysis won’t include dividends or distributions. Yahoo provides adjusted data, if you want to include that." The net return reported to you (as a percentage) by a mutual fund is the gross return minus the expense ratio.  So, if the gross return is X% and the expense ratio is Y%, your account will show a return of (X-Y)%.  Be aware that X could be negative too. So, with Y = 1, If X = 10 (as you might get from a stock fund if you believe historical averages will continue), then the net return is 9% and you have lost (Y/X) times 100% = 10% of the gross return. If X = 8 (as you might get from a bond fund if you believe historical averages will continue), then the net return is 7% and you have lost (Y/X) times 100% = 12.5% of the gross return. and so on and so forth.  The numbers used are merely examples of the returns that have been obtained historically, though it is worth emphasizing that 10% is an average return, averaged over many decades, from investments in stocks, and to believe that one will get a 10% return year after year is to mislead oneself very badly. I think the point of the illustrations is that expense ratios are important, and should matter a lot to you, but that their impact is proportionately somewhat less if the gross return  is high, but very significant if the gross return is low, as  in money-market funds.  In fact, some money market funds which  found that X < Y have even foregone charging the expense ratio  fee so as to maintain a fixed $1 per share price.  Personally,  I would need a lot of persuading to invest in even a stock fund with 1% expense ratio. Is my math correct? The Math is correct, however Dividends don't work this way. The Yield is Post Facto. i.e. Given the dividend that is declared every quarter, once calculates the yield. The dividends are not fixed or guaranteed. These change from Quarter to Quarter or at times they are not given at all. The yield is 3.29% and the value is $114 per share. Assuming that the price remains exactly the same for an entire year, and that I purchase only one share, then this should be the math for calculating the yield: 114 x 0.0329 = 3.7506 What the Link is showing is that last dividend of MCD was 0.94 for Q3; that means total for a year will be 0.94*4 [3.76], this means yield will be 3.29%. Note this year there were only 3 Dividend was 0.89 on 26-Feb, 0.89 on 2-Jun and 0.94 on 29-Nov. It is unlikely that there will be one more dividend this year. So for this year the correct post facto calculation would be 0.89+0.89+.94 = 2.72 and hence an yield of 2.38%  Also, are there any fees/deductions, or would I receive the amount in full, which should be $3.75? There are no fee deducted. Not sure about US tax treatment on Dividends. The solution is x = 8.92. This assumes that Chuck's six years of deposits start from today, so that the first deposit accumulates 10 years of gain, i.e. 20*(1 + 0.1)^10.  The second deposit gains nine years' interest: 20*(1 + 0.1)^9 and so on ...    If you want to do this calculation using the formula for an annuity due, i.e. http://www.financeformulas.net/Future-Value-of-Annuity-Due.html  where  (formula by induction) you have to bear in mind this is for the whole time span (k = 1 to n), so for just the first six years you need to calculate for all ten years then subtract another annuity calculation for the last four years.  So the full calculation is:  As you can see it's not very neat, because the standard formula is for a whole time span.  You could make it a little tidier by using a formula for k = m to n instead, i.e.  So the calculation becomes  which can be done with simple arithmetic (and doesn't actually need a solver). One estimate is to sell today, estimate the taxes, and determine how much cash you need to set aside over the next 12 months. The is no way to calculate what impact dividends and capital gains the funds will have, because unlike interest they aren't guaranteed. The other complexity is that the funds themselves could drop in value. In that case the dividends and capital gains may not even be enough to get you back to even. I use mutual funds to invest over the long term, with the idea of spending the funds over decades. When needing to save for a short term goal, I use banking products. They are guaranteed not to lose value, and the interest changes are slowerand thus easier to predict. You could use  the Gordon growth model implied expected return: P = D/(r-g) --&gt; r = D/P (forward dividend yield) + g (expected dividend growth). But obviously there is no such thing as a good market return proxy.