[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Fair enough, and not my area, but I thought when people speak of annual rate of return for investments they're considering compounding so just dividing by the number of years in the period would overstate.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/geometricmean.asp

So, some bad news here. Looks like my quick and dirty math in my head overstated the annual returns, and not by a little.

The annual return on that first one, factoring in compounding, is 15.4%.

Like me, you are probably thinking, WTF!!!

Just seems really low when your item goes up about 1,000%.

But I ran the math a few times and reverse engineered it. Investing that sum for that 15.4% rate over about 16 years gets you the final value.

Just another example of how your returns on cardboard might actually be less than you expect. Admittedly, not every investment in the stock market is going to generate 15.4% per year for 16 years.

And the return on cardboard is calculated before even factoring in selling costs and taxes. Although admittedly often investment returns are quoted on a pre-tax basis.