I'm not sure that's a given. They are different measures, but both completely valid. A return might be more meaningful to a long term investor, but ultimately e

I'm not sure that's a given. They are different measures, but both completely valid. A return might be more meaningful to a long term investor, but ultimately every other metric and participant is interested in the absolute change: traders to calculate pnl/greeks/etc, exchanges to match orders, clearers to calculate margin. If I am wearing 100 shares, whether it went from $5 to $10 or $100 to $105, it's the same pnl.