Total Return — Return

Cumulative compounded return on the Return equity curve over the entire period.

Computed from: Equity curve
Scope: Single report
Range: Any real number
Direction: Higher is better

Basis

Computed on the close-to-close Return Series (money-weighted)

Total Return is the total percentage your account — or the strategy — grew over the whole record, start to finish, compounded. It's the headline "how much did it grow" number, the first thing anyone looks at. It's cumulative, not annualized (that's CAGR), and it comes in percent (this metric) versus dollars (Total P&L).

How it's calculated

Total Return = (final curve value / initial curve value) − 1

final curve value: the equity curve's end point — its final growth factor, gf[-1]
initial curve value: the equity curve's start point — its initial growth factor, gf[0]

In this product: It's cumulative and compounded: stringing period returns together multiplies them, it doesn't add them. Computed on the default gain (money-weighted) curve; the twr (cashflow-neutral) curve is also available. Multiplied by 100 for the percent you see. Contrast CAGR (the annualized version) and Total P&L (the same bottom line in dollars).

Gain basis (default): the Return, money-weighted curve. It reflects what your actual account value did — including the timing of cashflows (deposits and withdrawals). A deposit right before a good run flatters it; a withdrawal can distort it. Answers "how did the account's value grow," cashflow timing and all.

Read it with time and risk

Total Return on its own is close to meaningless — it has no universal "good" or "bad," because it ignores the two things that give it meaning: how long it took and how much risk it cost.

Pair it with CAGR for time and max drawdown for risk. The same +100% is a triumph in one year and mediocre over a decade; achieved through a 15% drawdown it's excellent, through a 70% drawdown it's a near-death experience. Concretely: +200% over 10 years through a 70% drawdown is worse than +80% over 2 years with a 15% drawdown — even though the first number is bigger. A modest total return earned quickly with shallow drawdowns beats a huge one earned slowly and painfully.

Total Return is just the end point of the curve relative to its start: 250 / 100 − 1 = +150%.

Worked example

The catch is compounding — total return doesn't add, it multiplies. A strategy returns +50% in year 1, then +50% in year 2. The total is not +100%:

Total Return = 1.5 × 1.5 − 1 = +125%

And the mirror image — the recovery asymmetry — bites just as hard. A −50% year needs a +100% year just to break even (a halving is ×0.5, a doubling is ×2.0):

0.5 × 2.0 = 1.0  →  back to even (0% total return)

Losses and gains aren't symmetric under compounding. This is why a deep drawdown is so costly, and why total return must always be read alongside the drawdown that produced it.

Total Return vs CAGR vs Total P&L

Three views of the same growth:

Total Return — the cumulative percentage over the whole record. Time-blind and size-neutral.
CAGR — the same growth annualized into a per-year rate. A +100% total return over 4 years is roughly a 19% CAGR; CAGR adds time.
Total P&L — the same bottom line in money ($) instead of percent. The dollar figure, and so deposit-sensitive.

Pitfalls

Pitfalls & caveats

Meaningless without time. A huge total return spread over a decade can be a poor per-year rate. Always pair it with CAGR.
Meaningless without risk. A +300% return earned through an 80% drawdown is a near-death, not a triumph. Pair it with max drawdown.
Not additive. Period returns compound (multiply), they don't sum — +50% then +50% is +125%, not +100%.
Recovery asymmetry. A −50% needs a +100% just to get back to even. Losses cost more than the equal-sized gain to undo.
Gain basis is cashflow-contaminated. A well-timed deposit flatters the money-weighted number. Use the twr basis to judge the strategy.
It's an end-point — and the order matters when money is moving. It says nothing about the path. Two curves with the same total return can have wildly different drawdowns and shapes — pair with stability and drawdown. And if you're depositing or withdrawing, the sequence of returns matters: a drawdown early in a withdrawal phase, or late in a deposit phase, can leave you with far less surviving capital than the headline number suggests.
One big month can carry it. A single outsized month or trade can dominate the whole figure. Pair it with the equity curve and stability to see whether the growth was broad or one lucky spike.

CAGR (the annualized version) · Total P&L (the dollar version) · Max Drawdown (the risk that total return ignores).

Compare withCAGR Total P&L