Total Return

Total return is price change plus income, which is the only honest measure of what an investment made you. Judging a stock on its chart alone ignores dividends, and dividends have historically supplied roughly a third to a half of long-run equity returns. The distinction shows up starkly in index quotes: a price index and its total-return twin can diverge by thousands of percent over decades. Always check which version a chart is showing before comparing performance.