The two definitions
Price return is the change in share price between two dates, expressed as a percentage. It ignores any cash that left the company in the form of dividends. Total return assumes that every dividend received is immediately reinvested back into the same stock, and measures the percentage change in the value of that growing position.
For non-dividend-paying stocks the two numbers are identical. For dividend payers, total return is always larger over a long enough horizon — usually substantially so.
Why the numbers diverge over decades
Each dividend, on its own, is a small cash distribution — typically 0.5–1% of the share price per quarter for a U.S. blue chip. But when reinvested those dividends buy additional shares that themselves pay dividends, which buy still more shares. This is simple compounding. Over 30 years the cumulative effect can be larger than all the price appreciation combined.
Classic example: from 1970 to 2020 the S&P 500 price index rose roughly 30-fold, while the total-return index rose about 180-fold. The 6× gap is entirely reinvested dividends.
Split-adjusted vs dividend-adjusted closes
Most charting platforms display split-adjusted closes by default — the historical price is divided by the cumulative split ratio so that long-term charts do not show artificial step-downs. See stock split ratios explained for the mechanics.
Dividend-adjusted closes go further — they also subtract each cash dividend from the prior close, so that the adjusted series represents the path of an investor who reinvested every dividend. Total-return calculations use dividend-adjusted closes; price-return calculations use split-adjusted closes.
How rankings on this site use returns
Long-horizon rankings such as best stocks since IPO and max return are based on dividend-adjusted closes — i.e. they report total return, not price return. Daily-streak rankings such as daily green/red streaks also use dividend-adjusted returns so that the ex-day price drop on a dividend-payer does not artificially break a winning streak.
Related concepts and tools
- CAGR explained — the annualized form of any return number.
- Stock profit calculator — include dividends to compute total return for a real trade.
- Ex-dividend, record and payment dates — the schedule that drives the cash-dividend stream.
- Stock splits methodology — how the splits feed into adjusted-price computation.
To see total return for any specific stock between two dates, open its company hub and use the "What if you invested" tile.