If I buy a stock at 1$, it goes to 10$, falls back to 5$ and I sell... Did I make a profit or did I lose 50%? I can't get my head around this question.
An optimist would focus on the realized profit. A pessimist would focus on the drawdown from the peak price.
You are not familiar with the concept of realized and unrealized gains/losses? The other poster is right - what a waste of bandwidth...
Definitely stick with paper trading if this is something you had to think about for more than 3 seconds.
Debaser is no different than all those economists on CNBC that always talk about "Well if you bought silver in 1980, you are still down over 50%" Or the ones that say "Wow, look how great the economy is doing...the dow is up 4,500 points in 19 months! Thats almost double!" Last year I made a 187% return. I dont focus on the fact that I was up over 400% by june of that year and threw over half of it away on risky trades in the 2nd half of the year. Well...maybe I do a little bit.
It's a much more complicated question than the pinheads who infest this board will be able to tackle. I won't waste my time on it, but I'd seek an answer where the average IQ was > 75