Realized and unrealized gains

An unrealized gain is the difference between what a position is worth today and what it cost you, while you still hold it. A realized gain is what remained after you sold: the sale proceeds measured against the cost basis of the shares that left. The two are the same arithmetic at different moments, and together with dividends and minus fees they make up your result.

Why it matters

They behave differently enough to be worth separating. Unrealized amounts move every day and can undo themselves; realized amounts are finished and, in most countries, are the ones a tax return has an opinion about. A portfolio that looks flat overall can hide a large realized loss from earlier in the year and an equally large paper gain that has not been touched, and those two facts point in opposite directions when you are reading your own history.

How BullBenchmark shows it

We keep the two apart on the dashboard rather than blending them into one profit figure, and closed positions stay visible with the result they finished on instead of disappearing from the record. The year report gathers the same split per calendar year, together with the opening and closing values, and the Excel and PDF versions of that year carry it in the same layout. The split is filled in on the demo dashboard.

Related terms

Cost basis · Market value · Total return

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