You receive a year-end statement from your broker that detailsyour stock ownership over the years, and the total gain or lossover the holding period for each. You want to devise a method tomake a meaningful comparison of the returns in order to determinewhich stock performed the best and which performed the worst. Theproblem is, the holding periods all have different starting andending dates and are different lengths.

Stock returns
Stock   Buy date   Buy price (P0)  Sell date   Sell price (P1)   Totalreturn
((P1-P0)/P0)
A   1/1/2002   16.00  1/1/2016   25.00   56.3%
B   1/1/2014   87.00  1/1/2015   80.00   -8.0%
C   1/1/2008   26.00  1/1/2014   28.00   7.7%
D   1/1/2001   17.50  1/1/2008   23.50   34.3%
E   1/1/2004   76.00  1/1/2007   68.00   -10.5%
F   1/1/2006   12.00  1/1/2016   13.00   8.3%


What is the best way to compare the returns of these stocks?
   Use the return over the entire holding period for eachstock to compare
   Using the total return over the holding period foreach stock, take the geometric mean to get the one year averagereturn, and compare
   Find the dollar change of each stock (Sell price minusBuy price) and compare
   Using the total return over the holding period foreach stock, take the straight average to get the one year averagereturn, and compare