Peak value in Schedule FA, explained
Peak value is the column most people get wrong in Schedule FA. It is the highest rupee value your holding reached on any single day of the calendar year, and working it out properly takes a calculation for every trading day.
What the column asks for
Table A3 asks for the peak value of investment during the period: the highest value each holding reached between 1 January and 31 December, in rupees. It is not the price you paid, the year-end value, or the value on your vesting dates. It is the single highest point of the year.
How to work it out
For each lot, for every trading day of the calendar year it was held:
- take the number of shares held at the end of that day;
- multiply by that day's closing price in dollars;
- multiply by that day's SBI TT buying rate.
The highest of those daily rupee values is the peak value. For a lot held all year, that means around 250 calculations.
Why you can't shortcut it
The share price and the rupee move independently. The day your stock hit its highest dollar price is not always the day its rupee value was highest. Here is an illustration for 10 shares:
| Day | Close (USD) | SBI rate | Value (₹) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 February | $207.00 | 86.10 | ₹1,78,227 |
| 18 September | $205.00 | 87.80 | ₹1,79,990 |
| 5 December | $201.00 | 89.20 | ₹1,79,292 |
These numbers are illustrative. The highest share price was on 4 February, but the highest rupee value was on 18 September, so the peak value is ₹1,79,990.
Two shortcuts are wrong:
- Highest price × year-end rate: uses a rate from a different day than the price.
- Highest price × highest rate of the year: combines two days that never happened together, and overstates the peak.
Lots bought or sold during the year
Only count the days you actually held the shares. A lot that vested in March starts on its vest date. A lot you sold in August stops on the sale date; it still needs a row in Table A3, with its peak from before the sale, a closing balance of zero and the sale proceeds filled in.
Stock splits
Price sites such as Yahoo Finance show past prices adjusted for later splits. NVIDIA's closing price on 7 June 2024 appears as about $121, but shares actually traded at about $1,209 that day, before the 10-for-1 split on 10 June. If you hold a pre-split share count, use the actual traded price; if you use the adjusted price, use the post-split share count. Mixing the two understates the peak tenfold.
Per lot or per company?
You can report one row per lot or one row per company. Per lot is easier to check, because each row has one acquisition date and one cost, which the table asks for. For a per-company row, the peak is the highest combined value of all lots on a single day, not the sum of each lot's own peak.