The term “year to date”, often shortened to YTD, refers to the period of time since the start of the year. The year to date period is commonly used to refer to the performance of stocks, other investable assets and investment portfolios.
It’s important to note that year to date calculations can refer to either the calendar year or a fiscal year, depending on the context.
For example, Microsoft’s fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30. If you see a YTD calculation related to Microsoft, July 1 could be used as the starting point instead of January 1, so it’s important to double-check the figure to make sure. Different companies and organizations use different start and end dates for their fiscal year.
In the case of companies, financial statements based on a YTD time frame are often compared to financial statements for the same time frame in previous year. For example, you could compare a company’s financial performance between January and April of 2023 to its performance between January and April of 2024.
How is year to date (YTD) used?
The term “year to date” is used in a few different contexts. Most often, you’ll see it used in reference to returns or earnings since the start of the calendar year.
Year to date returns
The term to date is often use to reference a stock’s performance in the current year. For example, Tesla stock was trading at $248.4 on January 1, 2024. At the time of writing this article, on January 29, 2024, the stock is trading at $188.03. This means that TSLA’s year to date return is -24.3%.
The year to date time frame is often also used to evaluate the performance of an investment portfolio.
Year to date returns are also used when analyzing assets other than stocks. On CoinCodex, you can easily check the year to date returns of cryptocurrencies. On the frontpage, select the “Year to date” option in the “Change last” column.
You can also check a coin’s year to date returns if you’re on a specific coin overview exchange by choosing the “YTD” time frame.
Year to date earnings
Sometimes, YTD earnings are used to reference how much an individual has earned in the calendar year so far. This information can be included on pay stubs. In some contexts, YTD earnings are also used to reference how much a business or independent contractor has earned in the year so far.
Calculating year to date (YTD) returns
Here is how you can calculate the year to date returns of a stock, other investable asset or portfolio:
Current value / Value at start of calendar year – 1
Let’s take Microsoft stock as an example. At the start of the calendar year 2024, MSFT was trading at $370.87. At the time of writing this article, on January 29, 2024, the stock is priced at $406.18. Let’s plug these figures into our formula to find out the year to date return of Microsoft stock.
406.18 / 370.87 – 1 = 0.0952
We can multiply the result by 100 to arrive at the percentage:
0.0952 x 100 = 9.52
So, the year to date return of Microsoft stock as of January 29, 2024, is 9.52%.
Please note that January 1 is a market holiday in the United States. So, if it falls on a weekday, you can use the first day of the year when markets were open as the starting point. In our example of calculating the year to date return of Microsoft, we used January 2 as the starting point, as that was the first day of the year when US markets were open.
The bottom line
The year to date (YTD) time frame is commonly used to evaluate the performance of stocks and other assets that can be invested in. It can either be used in reference to the calendar year, or a company or organization’s fiscal year.
Source: https://coincodex.com/article/37177/ytd-meaning/