Thanks for your help. I don't think that the Microsoft Office Assistance
"Calculate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)" is really clear regarding
the calculations that I wanted to do.

"bpeltzer" wrote:

Sorry, I missed the XIRR. But you wouldn't consider the yearly changes in
value unless you were taking the capital gain off the table each year;
that's what would make it a cash flow! If you want to use XIRR to calculate
CAGR, and you haven't made additional investments nor taken money out, you
would just use the starting value / date and the ending value / date. So
-8580 and 11667 for the values and 12/31/02 and 12/31/05. XIRR then returns
10.777%.
As for the other way, in Excel, the formula would be
=((11667/8580)^(1/3))-1. Excel can calulate the power (or root in this case)
for you.
--Bruce

"Dick in SL" wrote:

In my subject line I stated that I was using XIRR, which is supposed to
calculate CAGR. I am not good at math and don't know how to do it as you
suggest (the ^(1/3) ) part of the calculation.

"bpeltzer" wrote:

)You didn't indcate what formula you used that generated the 46.82%.
To calculate a CAGR, I would take ((end_value/start_value ^ (1 / #_periods))
- 1. In this case ((11667/8580)^(1/3))-1 = 10.7875%


"Dick in SL" wrote:

Using Excel 2003. I am getting results that does not seem correct. I am
entering the beginning fund balance with a negative sign in cell A2 and the
increase in fund values each year in cells A3 to A5. Dates are all 12/31/xx
using DATE in cells B2 to B5.

Values are -8580, 2004, 619, 464 and the result is 46.82%

Using CAGR calculation in Investopedia.com I get 10.78%

What am I doing wrong in ExceL?

Thanks