ABC owns 10,000 shares of Coke stock. Each share paid a dividend of $1.60 during the year, but the share price declined from $53.80 to $51.80 during the year. What is ABC's percentage total return for this year?

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The key idea is to compute total return as the combination of income from dividends and the change in value, all divided by the starting investment. For each share, the price fell by 2.00 (53.80 to 51.80), and the dividend received was 1.60. So the net per-share return is -2.00 + 1.60 = -0.40. Relative to the starting price of 53.80, this is -0.40 / 53.80 ≈ -0.00743, or about -0.74%.

Looking at the whole position: starting value is 10,000 × 53.80 = 538,000; ending value is 10,000 × 51.80 = 518,000; total dividends received are 10,000 × 1.60 = 16,000. The total return in dollars is ending value plus dividends minus starting value: 518,000 + 16,000 − 538,000 = -4,000. As a percentage of the starting value, -4,000 / 538,000 ≈ -0.00744, or about -0.74%.

So the year’s total return is roughly -0.74%.