Profit and loss, or P&L, is the total gain or loss on your holdings, combining both realized profits from sales and unrealized changes in value.
P&L stands for profit and loss. It is the running total of how much money you have made or lost on an investment or an entire portfolio.
P&L has two parts. Realized P&L comes from positions you have actually sold or closed. Unrealized P&L reflects the paper gain or loss on positions you still hold, based on the current market price versus your cost basis.
Tracking P&L helps you see performance at a glance and make decisions about when to take profits or cut losses. A green portfolio P&L means your assets are collectively worth more than you paid.
WalletLens calculates your P&L automatically across every asset, showing both realized and unrealized figures so you can see your true performance without manual math.
Imagine you sold one stock for a $400 profit (realized) and still hold crypto bought for $1,000 now worth $1,300, a $300 unrealized gain. Your total P&L is $400 + $300 = $700. If the crypto later falls to $900, your unrealized portion flips to −$100 and total P&L drops to $300.
Realized P&L is locked in from positions you have actually sold, while unrealized P&L is the paper gain or loss on positions you still hold. Unrealized P&L keeps changing with the market until you sell.
A negative P&L means your positions are collectively worth less than you paid for them. It can be unrealized, meaning prices may still recover, or realized, meaning the loss is final because you have already sold.
WalletLens is a free, private net-worth tracker that puts concepts like this into practice — it tracks your crypto, stocks, gold and cash in one dashboard, computing cost basis, P&L and allocation automatically with live prices. No account, and your data stays on your device.
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