MWRR (also called IRR - Internal Rate of Return) is a compound growth rate. That's it.
If your MWRR is 15%, your money is growing at 15% per year. This is likely the most important information you need about your investments.
MWRR answers the question: "At what rate is my money actually growing?"
Unlike simple percentage gains, MWRR factors in when you added or withdrew funds. If you invested more right before a market dip, your MWRR will reflect that unfortunate timing. If you added funds before a rally, you'll see the benefit.
This makes MWRR personal to you - two investors with the same asset but different contribution patterns will have different MWRR values.
For each individual asset in NetFiscus, you can see its MWRR derived from your value updates and cash flows. On your dashboard, you can see the MWRR for your entire portfolio.
This gives you a clear picture of how your wealth is actually growing - accounting for all the deposits, withdrawals, dividends, and value changes along the way.
You invest $100 in the stock market. It grows by 10% in one year to $110. Your MWRR is 10%.
But what if halfway through the year you deposited an additional $50? Did you add that money when the market was low (good timing) or high (bad timing)? Your MWRR captures this - it might be higher or lower than 10% depending on your timing.
The TWR (Time-Weighted Return) would still show 10% because it measures the investment's performance, not yours.
MWRR is the rate that makes all your cash flows balance out to zero when discounted back to the start.
Write down every movement of money with its date. Deposits are negative, because the money left your pocket. Withdrawals are positive. Today's value counts as a final positive amount, as if you sold everything right now.
Then find the annual rate r where the present value of that list equals zero:
Σ [ CFi / (1 + r)di / 365 ] = 0
Here CFi is each cash flow and di is the number of days between the start and that cash flow.
There is no way to rearrange this equation and solve for r directly. The rate has to be found by trying values and narrowing in, which is what the XIRR algorithm does. A spreadsheet does the same thing when you call XIRR().
The practical takeaway: MWRR needs dates, not just amounts. A deposit without a date cannot be weighted, and weighting by date is the whole point.
You build a position over two years:
| Date | Event | Cash flow |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan 2024 | Initial purchase | -$10,000 |
| 1 Jul 2024 | Additional deposit | -$5,000 |
| 1 Jun 2025 | Withdrawal | +$2,000 |
| 1 Jan 2026 | Current value | +$16,500 |
You put in $15,000 and you now hold $16,500 plus the $2,000 you already took out. Your P&L is +$3,500.
But the rate is the interesting part. The $10,000 worked for two full years. The $5,000 worked for eighteen months. The $2,000 stopped working seven months before the end. XIRR weighs each of those periods and returns roughly 11% per year.
Now change one thing. Move the $5,000 deposit to 1 December 2025, one month before the end. The P&L is unchanged at +$3,500, because the same money went in and the same value came out. But the MWRR jumps to roughly 17%, because now almost all of the profit was earned by the original $10,000 over two years, and the $5,000 barely had time to do anything.
Same profit. Very different efficiency. That gap is exactly what MWRR is built to show you.
MWRR is particularly useful when:
NetFiscus uses the XIRR (Extended Internal Rate of Return) algorithm to calculate MWRR. This considers:
The result is an annualized percentage representing your personal compound growth rate.
While MWRR measures YOUR growth rate (including timing decisions), TWR (Time-Weighted Return) measures the ASSET's performance (independent of your cash flows).
| Aspect | MWRR | TWR |
|---|---|---|
| Measures | Your compound growth rate | Asset's pure performance |
| Affected by timing | Yes | No |
| Answers | "How fast is my money growing?" | "How did this investment perform?" |
NetFiscus focuses on MWRR because it answers the question most investors actually care about: "How fast is my money growing?" While TWR is useful for comparing fund managers or benchmarking investments, MWRR reflects your real wealth-building progress.
CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) is the rate that takes a single starting amount to a single ending amount over a period. It is simple and widely quoted.
The limit is that CAGR assumes exactly two cash flows: one in at the start, one out at the end. The moment you add money along the way, CAGR has no way to account for it.
| Aspect | MWRR | CAGR |
|---|---|---|
| Handles ongoing contributions | Yes | No |
| Needs dates for each flow | Yes | Start and end only |
| Fits a monthly investing habit | Yes | Poorly |
If you invest a fixed amount every month, CAGR will mislead you and MWRR will not. For a single lump sum held untouched, the two produce the same answer.
This surprises people often enough to deserve its own section.
A fund publishes a time-weighted return. That number answers "how did this fund perform", and it deliberately strips out investor cash flows, because the manager does not control when you buy.
Your MWRR answers a different question: "how did my money perform". If you bought in after a strong year, your capital missed that year. The fund still reports the gain. You did not receive it.
Neither number is wrong. They measure different things. When you compare yourself against a benchmark, compare like with like, and remember that the published figure assumes a lump sum held for the whole period.
If your cash flows happen in several currencies, each one is converted to your display currency at the rate from its own date before the XIRR runs.
This matters more than it first appears. A deposit made when your currency was weak cost you more in real terms, and the calculation reflects that. Converting everything at today's rate instead would quietly erase every currency gain and loss from your return.
The consequence is that the same portfolio can show two different MWRR values depending on your display currency, and both are correct. The one that matters is the currency you actually spend.
To check any rate the calculation used, open the historical exchange rate tool. For the wider picture, see tracking investments across multiple currencies.
NetFiscus needs at least two data points on different dates to calculate MWRR. The more history you have, the more meaningful the calculation becomes.
The cash flows also need at least one negative and one positive entry. A list with only deposits has no rate to solve for, because nothing has come back yet. The current value normally supplies the positive side.
If you see a blank MWRR value, add more historical data or record additional value updates and cash flows.
You solve for the rate that makes the present value of every cash flow equal zero. Each deposit counts as negative, each withdrawal as positive, and today's value as a final positive amount. There is no closed formula, so the rate is found by iteration. In a spreadsheet the XIRR function does it. NetFiscus runs the same XIRR algorithm on the cash flows you record.
Yes. Money-Weighted Rate of Return and Internal Rate of Return describe the same calculation. The investing world tends to say MWRR, the corporate finance world tends to say IRR, and XIRR is the version that handles irregular dates.
MWRR measures how fast your money grew, including the effect of when you added or removed it. TWR measures how the investment itself performed, ignoring your cash flows. Fund managers are judged on TWR because they do not control deposits. You should read MWRR, because you do.
Almost always because of timing. Published fund returns are time-weighted. If you added most of your money after a strong run, your own money missed that growth, so your MWRR is lower. This is not an error. It is the honest measure of your result.
Yes, though it is uncommon. It happens when a large late deposit sits at a loss while a small early position carries the profit. The absolute amount can stay positive while the rate turns negative. Read it together with P&L.
Annualization. A 3% gain over one month annualizes to roughly 43%. Over very short periods the rate is mathematically correct but not meaningful. Give the calculation several months of history before you read anything into it.
The calculation needs at least two data points on different dates, and it needs at least one positive and one negative cash flow. Record additional value updates or cash flows and the value appears.
