Calculate gains or losses from stock trades with buy/sell price, shares, and commission inputs.
This calculator works out the real result of a stock trade: enter the price you paid per share, the price you sold at, how many shares, and the commissions charged on both legs, and it returns your net profit or loss in dollars and as a percentage of what you actually invested. The arithmetic is simple: price difference times shares, minus fees. But the part that most often surprises people is that commissions apply on both sides of the trade, so two small flat fees can turn a marginal gain into a loss, particularly on small positions.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Buy 100 shares of XYZ at $50.00, sell all 100 at $62.50, commission $10.00 on each side of the trade.
Expected output
Net profit: $1,230.00. Total cost: $5,010.00 ($5,000.00 purchase plus $10.00 buy commission). Net proceeds: $6,240.00 ($6,250.00 sale minus $10.00 sell commission). Return: 24.55% on invested capital.
The gross gain is $12.50 per share on 100 shares, or $1,250.00, and the two $10.00 commissions reduce that to $1,230.00. Dividing by the $5,010.00 actually invested gives 24.55%, slightly less than the stock's 25% price move.
Total cost equals shares multiplied by buy price plus the buy-side commission; net proceeds equal shares multiplied by sell price minus the sell-side commission. Profit is proceeds minus cost, and the percentage return divides profit by the total cost. Because the buy commission sits in the denominator and both commissions reduce the numerator, the reported return is always a bit below the stock's own price move.
The output is the nominal cash result of a single buy-and-sell pair. There is no time dimension, so nothing is annualized and holding period plays no part. It also assumes every share was bought at one price and sold at one price, so trades built from multiple lots, or stocks that paid dividends or split, need those events folded into the entered prices first to stay accurate.
Yes, but with zero fees the percentage comes out matching the price move and the profit is simply shares times the price difference. The tool still helps because it forces you to state both prices explicitly, and if your broker charges any other per-trade fee, you can fold it in as the commission.
No. There is no holding period or annualization anywhere in the calculation, so a 10% gain realized in a week and the same gain realized over three years both report 10%. If you need a rate comparable across different holding periods, convert the result to an annualized return or CAGR separately.
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