How to Vlookup in excel with 2 conditions - excel

Question

I'm evaluating my portfolio, and I make a record of it in some form like this:
I wish to get the profit% of those stocks, from either;
Stocks with sold: (Price at SELL/Price at BUY)-1
Stocks not sold: (Current Price/Price at BUY)-1
For 1), I was thinking of getting the Last Price (Col E) of Stock A by using VLOOKUP conditioning with 'Stock A' of Col B and a 'SELL' of Col C (then obviously using the VLOOKUP again with 'SELL' condition changed to 'BUY').
Is there a way to look up a value with two conditions? Any other suggestions (using a touch of VBA for eg) would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

A VLOOKUP is, in effect, a special form of INDEX MATCH (or XLOOKUP, from Office365 onwards). In other words, VLOOKUP("Value", A:C, 3, FALSE) is the same as INDEX(C:C, MATCH("Value", A:A, 0)), and VLOOKUP("Value", A:C, 3, TRUE) is the same as INDEX(C:C, MATCH("Value", A:A, 1))
Then, to create a VLOOKUP equivalent that checks multiple columns, we need to create a MATCH function to do the same. Fortunately, this is possibly using Array Calculations.
Essentially, we replace the second argument of the MATCH (the list of values to look for) with a formula which creates an Array based on our Conditions, and we Search the list for where the conditions are True. For example, if our Conditions are Column B = "Stock A" and Column C = "BUY", then our Array Calculation is (B:B="Stock A")*(C:C="Buy"), and our MATCH looks like this:
MATCH(1, (B:B="Stock A")*(C:C="BUY"), 0)
(At a Boolean or Bitwise level, * is the same as AND: TRUE*TRUE=TRUE, FALSE*FALSE=FALSE, TRUE*FALSE=FALSE)
Rather than using Entire Columns (which are Slow), it is often best to limit the number of rows. You can either do this manually:
=INDEX($E$1:$E$5, MATCH(1, ($B$1:$B$5="Stock A")*($C$1:$C$5="BUY"), 0))
Or you can do it dynamically with INDEX and COUNTA:
=INDEX($E$1:INDEX($E:$E, COUNTA($A:$A)), MATCH(1, ($B$1:INDEX($B:$B, COUNTA($A:$A)), ="Stock A")*($C$1:INDEX($C:$C, COUNTA($A:$A)), ="BUY"), 0))
Final note: the MATCH function will start at the top of the list, and work down until the first match. If these are in Date Order, and you want to find the last match, then Office356 users have the XMATCH function available, which has an extra argument used to decide if the search is First-to-Last (XMATCH(.., .., .., 1)), Last-to-First (XMATCH(.., .., .., -1)), Ascending Binary Search (XMATCH(.., .., .., 2)), or Descending Binary Search (XMATCH(.., .., .., -2))
Otherwise, you may have to use SUMPRODUCT to get the MAX date that matches your criteria, and include that in your MATCH conditions (SUMPRODUCT(MAX(A:A*(B:B="Stock A")*(C:C="BUY")))

Answer 2

Is there a way to look up a value with two conditions?
There is a very simple solution - you can concatenate (using &) the two columns holding conditions for your search into one and then base your VLOOKUP search on that column. Remember to put this concatenated column at beginning of your table.

Answer 3

If you can ensure that the combination Stock A - BUY and Stock A - SELL occur only once like in
and never twice like in
Then you can use the SUMIFS function to "lookup" the value. Because the sum of only one value will always be the value itself:
=SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"BUY")/SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"SELL") -1
To be sure there is only one entry per combination you can use the COUNTIFS to check it and return a warning in case of multiple entries (which would result in a false value):
=IF(AND(COUNTIFS(B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"BUY")=1,COUNTIFS(B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"SELL")=1), SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"BUY")/SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,"Stock A",C:C,"SELL") -1,"multiple entries found")