Please see the responses to your first posting.

In the future, please do not the same question multiple times, be it in the
same or multiple newsgroups. That usually leads to confusion, and it wastes
the time of responders.


----- original posting -----

"W" wrote in message
...
I use XIRR to calculate a compound annual return on investments. This
works fine when the first value is negative and the others are positive.
However I cannot get it to work for a short sale. For a short sale, you
are paid up front, and then you pay back the investment later.

If I have a short sale like:

1/27/2012 2/3/2012
$52 -$50

XIRR tells me it is an annualized return of -87.1% (NEGATIVE return, even
though it is net positive cash)

If I reverse this:

1/27/2012 2/3/2012
-$50 $52

XIRR tells me it is 673% annualized return. But at least it is positive.

Why does XIRR have problems dealing with positive cash up front followed
by
negative cash flows?

--
W