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To calculate Yahoo Finance’s adjusted closing price for a historical date, start with that date’s Close and multiply it by every split and dividend-distribution adjustment that applies to the date. Yahoo Help says its adjusted-close multipliers follow CRSP standards. The result is a historical comparison price—not the raw trade price or a complete measure of your personal investment return.
Close and Adjusted Close are different fields
Yahoo Finance’s historical-data table defines Close as the closing price adjusted for splits, while Adj Close is adjusted for splits and dividend and/or capital-gain distributions. That is why the two fields can differ for a security with distributions. In Yahoo’s S&P 500 historical table, the values happen to match on the listed dates; that index example does not show how a dividend-paying stock’s fields can diverge. See Yahoo Finance’s S&P 500 historical data table.
Yahoo Help defines the field this way: “Adjusted close is the closing price after adjustments for all applicable splits and dividend distributions.” Yahoo Help: What is the adjusted close?
How to calculate Yahoo Finance’s adjusted close
- Start with the historical Close. Use the Close for the date you are calculating, not a current quote or a different date’s price.
- Apply later splits that affect that date. Use Yahoo’s split multiplier for each applicable event. A 2-for-1 split uses 0.5, a 4-for-1 split uses 0.25, and a 1-for-5 reverse split uses 5. In Yahoo’s example, dates on or after an event are not restated for that event.
- Calculate each cash-dividend multiplier. For the dividend in Yahoo’s example, the multiplier is
1 − (dividend ÷ closing price immediately before the ex-date). Apply it to data before the ex-date. With an $0.08 dividend and a $24.96 prior close, the multiplier is1 − 0.08/24.96 = 0.9968. - Multiply the Close by all applicable event factors. Keep sufficient precision during the calculation and round at the end for display. Deferring rounding is a practical way to avoid compounding rounding error; Yahoo’s example displays prices to two decimal places.
Yahoo’s worked example
Yahoo Help’s example combines an $0.08 dividend, a $24.96 close immediately before its ex-date, and a 2-for-1 split. For Feb. 16, it calculates 0.5 × 0.9968 × 46.99 = 23.42. For Feb. 18—after the split but before the dividend ex-date—it calculates 0.9968 × 24.96 = 24.88. Yahoo says Feb. 16 and Feb. 17 receive both factors; Feb. 18 through Feb. 20 receive the dividend factor; and Feb. 21 onward receives neither of these example adjustments. These are Yahoo’s illustrative values, not a promise that every security or corporate action uses only these factors.
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Check which events apply to your date
The date determines which factors belong in the calculation. A pre-split date may need the split multiplier as well as any applicable distribution multiplier; a date after the split is not adjusted for that split in Yahoo’s example. Likewise, the dividend factor applies to pre-ex-date data in the cash-dividend example. Confirm the event type and ex-date against the security’s historical or events data before calculating, then compare your result with Yahoo Finance’s published row.
Yahoo Help’s explanation and example do not establish every treatment for unusual distributions, withholding taxes, foreign-exchange effects, security-specific corrections, or later data revisions. If an unusual event produces a mismatch, report the difference rather than assuming the simple cash-dividend formula covers it.
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What the adjusted price does—and does not—tell you
Adjusted Close is useful when comparing historical prices across splits and distributions on a more comparable basis. It is not the raw price at which a security traded on that date. Nor should it automatically be treated as your after-tax return, tax basis, or full account return: a personal result can depend on fees, taxes, and how you handled dividends.
CRSP describes holding-period return as a calculation that includes a dividend amount and a price adjustment factor, which is distinct from treating an adjusted-price field itself as a complete return measure. CRSP stock-index methodology.
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