Apple Numbers YIELDDISC Function: Discount-Security Yield and Basis
Calculate yield from per-100 quotes with complete actual/365 controls, position scaling and Apple’s longer 30/360 example.
Verification status: See the evidence and test scope described in this guide. How formula examples are checked
YIELDDISC calculates an annual yield for a security bought below its redemption value without periodic interest payments. Price and redemption are quoted per 100 of face value. The gain is measured relative to the purchase price, so it should not be confused with a discount percentage measured relative to redemption.
Availability and evidence
The official YIELDDISC reference was retrieved October 15, 2026. It currently documents this function for Apple Numbers. The original introduction release and last functioning version are unknown from the checked sources. Current documentation is not a final supported-version endpoint or proof of identical behavior on every older client.
No native Apple Numbers session was executed. Numeric examples are independently calculated controls; locale-dependent examples retain their stated context. Apple’s shared function help is not a test of every Mac, iPhone, iPad or iCloud build.
Syntax and valid ordinary inputs
YIELDDISC(settle, maturity, price, redemption, days-basis)
settle is the settlement date and maturity must be later. price and redemption must both be positive. To convert a purchase amount to its per-100 quote, use purchase amount / face value * 100; redemption uses the corresponding normalization.
Optional days-basis is 0 or omitted for US/NASD 30/360, 1 for actual/actual, 2 for actual/360, 3 for actual/365, and 4 for European 30/360. The two 30/360 conventions differ in date adjustments. The worked short-term examples specify basis 3 or 2 and avoid inventing month-end rules.
Use actual date cells or DATE expressions to avoid ambiguous date strings. A displayed date format does not change the intended day, month and year supplied by the fixture.
Complete short-term worksheet
Enter the following inputs in B2:B6: settlement April 1, 2026, maturity July 1, 2026, price 98, redemption 100, basis 3. For unambiguous formula-entry dates use =DATE(2026,4,1) and =DATE(2026,7,1).
The formula is =YIELDDISC(B2,B3,B4,B5,B6). There are 91 actual days between the dates. The independent expected result is 0.0818569186, or approximately 8.18569186%.
The model control is (100-98)/98 * 365/91. Its first factor is the holding-period gain relative to money paid. The second annualizes using this explicitly selected actual/365 convention. This arithmetic control does not claim a particular native evaluation order or error behavior.
Example: basis 2 changes the annualization
Keeping the same dates and quotes but setting B6 to 2 gives the independent target 0.0807355909, or 8.07355909%. The actual day count remains 91; the year multiplier changes from 365 to 360.
The difference is not caused by a changed redemption payment or another cash flow. It comes entirely from the day-count basis. Record the chosen basis with any quoted annual result so that two reports can be reconciled.
Example: scale from a quote to a position
For face value 25000, a price quote of 98 means a purchase amount of 24500, and redemption 100 means 25000 is received at maturity. The gain is 500 and the holding-period return is 500/24500, approximately 2.04081633%.
That holding-period return matches (100-98)/98. Annualizing it with 365/91 gives the same 8.18569186% control. Increasing position size changes the cash amounts, not the yield, when dates and proportional quotes remain unchanged.
Advanced: solve a target simple annual yield
For the same 91-day, actual/365 fixture and redemption 100, a target annual rate of 8% implies an independent price of 100/(1+8%*91/365) = 98.0444826475. Substituting that price into the short-term yield control returns 8% before display rounding.
Keep more digits in the stored quote than in the report if the goal is a precise round trip. A displayed two-decimal price of 98.04 is a different input and need not return exactly 8%.
This annualization does not assert that the security can repeatedly be reinvested at the same rate. Do not interpret it as a guaranteed compounded annual return or an investment recommendation.
Advanced: reproduce the official longer example
Apple supplies settlement May 1, 2009, maturity June 30, 2015, price 65.98, redemption 100 and basis 0. Its published target is approximately 8.36502410155835%.
For those ordinary dates, the 30/360 control is 2219 days. The independently calculated ratio (100-65.98)/65.98*360/2219 reproduces the published result. This example has no problematic 31st-day or February-end adjustment to generalize.
The reference also supplies an actual/actual result for that longer interval. This guide does not turn that single example into a complete multi-year actual/actual algorithm; use an explicitly established convention before extending the model to unusual date spans.
Errors and troubleshooting
Check that maturity is strictly later than settlement and that both per-100 quotes are positive. A percentage-formatted output of 8.1857% corresponds to a stored decimal near 0.081857, not the number 8.1857.
If two results differ, check quote normalization, actual date values and basis before changing the formula. The dedicated entry does not enumerate a complete native error-code table for invalid bases, fractional bases, text dates or equal dates. Those cases were not executed in Numbers, and another program’s errors are not presented as Apple results.