[Rain Man]

On a completely different note, I'd like to report something that chafes me and see if anyone has a solution.

I'd like to know the total return on a stock when I hold it, but if the stock pays a dividend it seems like this is impossible.

For example, if I buy and hold a non-dividend stock at a cost of (for example) $1,000, I can look a year later and if it's at $1,100 then I got a 10% return.

But let's say I hold a dividend stock that pays 3%, and it also goes up 10% in that year. If I'm reinvesting dividends, I now have $1,130 in stock, but the cost basis is now $1,030 because it counts the purchase of the re-invested dividends as a cost. So it says my return is 1130/1030 = 9.7% when it's really 1130/1000 = 13.0%. If I don't reinvest dividends I have a different problem because then I have to chase down the cash and manually add it back in to calculate returns.

This really bugs me, because essentially it undercounts my returns on dividend stocks pretty notably. I can't think of a workaround unless there's some setting on the various brokerage sites that can adjust for it. Anyone else ever address this?