Yield

Yield

The percentage return paid on a stock in the form of dividends, or the effective rate of interest paid on a bond or note.

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yield

The percentage return on an investment. A given investment can have a variety of yields because of the many methods used to measure yield. For example, a bond's yield may be stated in terms of its returns if held to maturity, if held to the call date, or if held to the put date; or the yield may be calculated simply on the basis of the interest the bond pays compared with its current market price. Also called return. See also current yield, dividend yield, yield to average life, yield to call, yield to maturity, yield to put.

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Yield. Yield is the rate of return on an investment expressed as a percent.

Yield is usually calculated by dividing the amount you receive annually in dividends or interest by the amount you spent to buy the investment.

In the case of stocks, yield is the dividend you receive per share divided by the stock's price per share. With bonds, it is the interest divided by the price you paid. Current yield, in contrast, is the interest or dividends divided by the current market price.

In the case of bonds, the yield on your investment and the interest rate your investment pays are sometimes, but by no means always, the same. If the price you pay for a bond is higher or lower than par, the yield will be different from the interest rate.

For example, if you pay $950 for a bond with a par value of $1,000 that pays 6% interest, or $60 a year, your yield is 6.3% ($60 ÷ $950 = 0.0631). But if you paid $1,100 for the same bond, your yield would be only 5.5% ($60 ÷ $1,100 = 0.0545).