Capital Gains Yield

You bought SHMO (our stock ticker, should we ever go public) at $12. You held it a year, and a year later it was at $14. Your capital (the 1,000 shares of our awesome stock you bought for 12 grand) returned a capital yield of 2/14, or about 14.3%.

That's before tax. And that presumes you sell all of our stock that moment. And that there are no commissions. But notionally, anyway, your capital gains yield would have been the 14.3% thing...and note that it also presumes we don't pay a dividend. If we did, that'd not be a part of the calculation here. This 14.3% applies only to the appreciation of the stock price...nothin' else.