Financial Toolbox

xirr

Internal rate of return for nonperiodic cash flow

Syntax

• Return = xirr(CashFlow, CashFlowDates, Guess, MaxIterations)
  

Arguments

CashFlow	A vector of nonperiodic cash flows. Include the initial investment as the initial cash flow value (a negative number).
CashFlowDates	A vector of dates on which the cash flows occur. Enter dates as serial date numbers or date strings.
Guess	(Optional) Initial estimate of the expected return. Default = 0.1 (10%).
MaxIterations	(Optional) Number of iterations used by Newton's method to solve for Return. Default = 50.

Description

Return = xirr(CashFlow, CashFlowDates, Guess, MaxIterations) returns the internal rate of return for a schedule of nonperiodic cash flows.

Examples

An investment of $10,000 returns this nonperiodic cash flow. The original investment and its date are included.

Cash flow	Dates
($10000)	January 12, 2000
$2500	February 14, 2001
$2000	March 3, 2001
$3000	June 14, 2001
$4000	December 1, 2001

To calculate the internal rate of return for this nonperiodic cash flow

• CashFlow = [-10000, 2500, 2000, 3000, 4000];
  CashFlowDates = ['01/12/2000'
                   '02/14/2001'
                   '03/03/2001'
                   '06/14/2001'
                   '12/01/2001'];
  Return = xirr(CashFlow, CashFlowDates)
  

returns

• Return =
           0.1009 (or 10.09%)
  

See Also
fvvar, irr, mirr, pvvar

References

Sharpe and Alexander, Investments, 4th edition, page 463.

x2mdate

year