Every term is defined twice: once the way a filing would put it, and once the way somebody would explain it to you across a table. The second one is usually the one that sticks.
Showing 5 terms
Price change plus dividends, the complete return from holding an asset.
A stock yielding 6% while falling 15% is not producing income. Judge holdings on this, never on yield. On a high-payout instrument such as a REIT it is most of the answer, and none of it is on the price chart.
The same index basket computed with dividends reinvested, as against the price index, which excludes them.
Over weeks the difference is invisible; over a decade it is two different-looking charts. Any statement that “the index went nowhere” is being made on the series that throws the dividends away.
The total return from buying a security and holding it for a stated period or for its whole listed life, with no trading in between.
The honest measure of what owning one company delivered. Counted this way, the majority of listed firms have trailed the risk-free rate over their lifetimes.
The index or standard against which portfolio performance is measured.
Only meaningful if it reflects what you would otherwise have done. Use total return versions.
An index computed from the prices of its constituents alone, with dividends excluded — the series almost every headline index level quoted in India refers to.
The counterpart of the total return index, not another name for it. Comparing a holding that pays out against a price index charges the holding for its own dividends, and the error is the difference in the two payout rates, compounded.