Annualized Internal Rate of Return (AIRR) - The AIRR is the internal rate of return (IRR) for each investment. It is calculated using all cash flows into and out of the investment, as well as changes in share price.
The IRR calculation is quite complex but the concept is not. IRR can be thought of as an interest rate similar to the annualized interest rates on CDs. You can compare the IRR for a stock to the interest rate you might have had available if you had money to invest in a CD during the same time period.
For example, during the time period covered by the report, perhaps you could have invested your money in CD's earning 1.25% annualized interest. Instead you made an investment that grew at an IRR rate of, for example, 18%. At the end of the time period your total return would be much greater for your investment in the stock than in the CD. You took on more risk, but you had a bigger gain.
Note that when you compare the IRR's of two stocks, you are not comparing only the stocks themselves. Your IRR is also influenced by the time period being covered and the decisions you made to get into and out of the investment during the period. Unless you are comparing two investments for exactly the same time period with exactly the same cash flows, you are not comparing apples to apples.
AIRR's for short periods of time can become extremely distorted and misleading because you are extrapolating short term changes out to a yearly rate. For example: Suppose you had $1000 invested and it earned a 1% total return or $10 on the first day. On an annualized basis $10 earned on $1000 invested for one day equals an AIRR of over 3600%. In other words, if you put $1000 into a bank account, you'd only earn $10 in one day if it paid interest at a rate of 3679%.
Because of this, you will see a value of N/A displayed when the period covered by the report is shorter than the configured A.I.R.R. Wait Period. An officer may change the default of 6 months by changing the
Club Configuration settings.
In the unlikely event that bivio does not find all of the data necessary to calculate an accurate AIRR, bivio will place an ERR in the AIRR column rather than a value.