Financial investments are measured through metrics for investment banking performance. This is a way of gauging if a financial undertaking is worth the risk and the effort. There is no point of providing inputs if the output is not satisfactory and if it does not meet certain specifications of what needs to be achieved.
Depending on the investment, there are several Key Performance Indicators that one may look at before arriving to a conclusion whether the financial investment is earning or losing money. One of these things is the return of investment of ROI. To compute this, the total amount of investment should be subtracted from the incremental earnings or profits. The difference will then be divided by the investment to get the percentage. To be more accurate in the calculation, data analysis must also be used. Numbers that will show sales, outgoing funds, expenses, and such will give an analyst a clearer view on whether there is substantial return on investment or not.
Another metric used is the years the investment was active. This will help individuals or businesses know what return they want to calculate. It is not wise to make judgment for the feasibility of an investment if it was just active for one month. Therefore, there should be a substantial amount of data to be studied. The ideal number of data points to be compared or used in an analysis is 20 data points. This means that the results of an investment should be measure for a minimum of 20 weeks, or 20 months, or even 20 years. Only then will an analyst see the causal effects of actions taken and how these things can be corrected in an objective way.
Always take note that measuring the financial performance of a company should be data driven. Just because the company did not earn does not mean it should be closed. Action plans and decisions should never be based on assumptions. All of them should be backed up by numbers and data since numbers do not lie. With this, people will not be fired or blamed because of poor logic and unwarranted assumptions and politically motivated intentions.
Another performance indicator of an investment is yield. The yield should be calculated in percentage and this will show an investor how much his investment has made in profit. If the investor has a certain target in mind, what he has to do is to divide target by the yield percentage, to find out how much he needs to add to his investment. For example, an investor has $1,000,000 in investment to the bank and he wants to measure its performance. After a month, he received a profit of $100,000. His yield percentage is 10%. If his target profit is $150,000, this means he is short of $50,000.
To determine how much investment should be added, he should divide by $150,000 by 10. The result is $150,000. This means he has to invest $150,000 to get the profit he wants, in order to get a substantial result of his metrics for investment banking performance.