whats a reasonable return percentage on your investment?

Answer 1

Depending on your capacity to sustain risk.

Answer 2

It all depends what your investment is, what the market is doing and what you desire.

You could call your savings account an investment. If you got 3% annually from that, it would be great.

However, if you were investing in an index fund for the S&P500, and it gave you 3%, that would be substandard. The market generally returns 8-10% annually.

But if you invested in a single stock and it returned -2%, but the general stock market lost 10%, then your investment could be considered a good return. Conversely, if you invested in a single stock and it returned 10%, but the market went up 30%, your investment could be considered having a substandard return.

So you see that it all depends on your point of view. In general, I'd say anything that returns 8-10% annually could be considered reasonable.

Answer 3

There is a concept called minimum acceptable rate of return or MARR. It is purely subjective and is based upon your subjective needs and the returns associated with the available choices.

So, for short term debt say under 120 days 5.25% is reasonable. For long debt 6%, for stocks, I require at least an 11% rate of return based upon discounted cash flows or income for a first tier stock and I require that I have a sizeable margin of safety to receiving that return.

Answer 4

With the volatility of today I'm happy with the security of buying CDs at 5%.