Investment Quality Dashboard
Compare a stock, bond, and cash holding side by side on valuation, yield, and NPV against your required hurdle rate.
Example: $10,000 that could buy a dividend stock trading 15% below its Gordon Model intrinsic value, a 6% coupon bond priced at a 5.5% yield, or sit in cash earning 4%, shows the stock offering the highest expected real return over 10 years once inflation and margin of safety are both factored in.
Combines Gordon Growth Model stock valuation, bond present-value pricing, and NPV against your hurdle rate for a like-for-like comparison.
How the investment quality dashboard works
Comparing a stock against a bond against cash savings is hard because each is usually evaluated with a different framework — a stock on valuation multiples, a bond on yield, cash on nothing at all. This dashboard puts all three through the same three lenses: valuation (is the stock cheap or expensive relative to its Gordon Growth intrinsic value, and is the bond priced fairly relative to its coupon and market yield), NPV against your own required return, and inflation-adjusted real return over the same horizon and capital amount.
The real-return figures use the same Fisher-equation methodology as the standalone Inflation Adjusted Return calculator, applied consistently across all three options so the ranking isn't skewed by inflation assumptions differing between them. For a risk-adjusted view of a specific portfolio's historical performance rather than a forward-looking comparison like this one, see the Sharpe Ratio calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is the ranking not "risk-adjusted" like the name might imply?
- No volatility or standard-deviation model exists in this platform for an arbitrary user-specified share or bond, so a Sharpe-style risk adjustment isn't fabricated. The ranking is by real (inflation-adjusted) return only.
- How is the stock exit price at the horizon estimated?
- Under the Gordon Growth Model's own assumptions, a share's fair price grows at the dividend growth rate each year — so the projected exit price at your horizon is the intrinsic value compounded forward at that rate.
- What happens if my investment horizon is shorter than the bond's maturity?
- The bond cash-flow projection assumes you sell at the horizon instead of holding to maturity, re-priced at the same market yield for the remaining time to maturity.
- What does the investment quality dashboard show?
- It compares the same amount of capital invested in a stock, a bond, or plain cash savings on equal terms — valuation (Gordon Growth intrinsic value and bond fair price), NPV against your required return, and inflation-adjusted real return over your chosen horizon — so you can see which option actually comes out ahead.
- How are investments ranked?
- The three options are ranked purely by real (inflation-adjusted) return over your specified horizon — not by a risk-adjusted measure, since no volatility model exists for an arbitrary user-specified stock or bond in this platform.
- What is real return and how is it calculated?
- Real return is your nominal return with the effect of inflation stripped out, so it reflects actual growth in purchasing power rather than the raw percentage gain. It uses the same Fisher-equation approach as the standalone Inflation Adjusted Return calculator, applied here to each of the stock, bond, and cash scenarios.
- What data feeds the dashboard?
- Everything is computed directly from the inputs you provide — dividend and growth assumptions for the share, coupon and yield for the bond, and your own inflation and horizon assumptions for the comparison — there is no external market data feed behind the numbers.
- How often should I update my inputs?
- Since the dashboard uses your own assumptions rather than live market data, it's only as current as the numbers you enter — update the share price, bond yield, and your required return whenever market conditions or your own assumptions change meaningfully.