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Investment Return
Investment return is what you get back on an investment you make. Ideally, if the return is positive, your initial investment will remain intact and you will end up with more than you have invested. But because investing typically involves risk especially if you invest in securities such as stocks, your return can be negative, i.e. having less money than you initially invested.

When evaluating investment return, it is important to assess the impact of transaction costs on the investment. Typically your return will be the net after all transactions costs.

To evaluate your investment return against other investments and benchmarks, you need the rate of return which is the investment return expressed as a percentage of the total amount invested.

Capital gains
Capital gains is capital appreciation on selling an investment.  If you sell shares for more than the purchasing price, the difference is the capital gains.

Yield
The yield on an investment is the amount of money you collect in interest or dividends, calculated as a percentage of either the current price of the investment or the price you paid to buy it.

While yield is just one of the factors you typically use to evaluate stock performance, it figures much more prominently in evaluating bonds and other interest-paying investments where current income is often of primary importance.

Volatility
This is the tendency of some investments to fluctuate rather quickly in value, the more volatile an investment is, the more it can potentially lose or gain value in the short-term. Not all investments are equally volatile.

Stock and stock mutual funds tend
to change prices more quickly than bonds. Prices of newer company stocks may also fluctuate faster and more dramatically
than those of larger, well-established companies.