Quote:
Originally Posted by toy71camaro
so.. diving into my 401k now... all mutual fund stuff... and I'm getting confused the deeper i look.. lol...
So, I'll just take one fund here, for sake of understanding...
I look at my "Royce Opportunity" fund. It shows i have aprox a $2500 "Balance" and I have aprox 120 "units" with a Unit Value of 20.251. But when i click on the fund, it brings up the fund details page. Says the ticker is RYPNX.
Ok, all ok so far...
I go to Schwab, lets "dive into this fund"... I pull up RYPNX, it shows its $12.12 a share.. wait, i thought it was 20.251?  I take my 120 units multipied by $12.12 and i got barely half of what my 401k balance sheet says. 
Then... second thing...
I look at that ticker on schwab, shows a 0.00% dividend yield.. ok, No dividend. fine. Then it has a "Long Term Capital Gain" of $0.1887. With a Distribution total of $0.1887 as of 12/08/11. So, was that $0.1887/share given to me? or, something else?
Not sure this is "Investing 102".. but... i figured you guys might know the answers. lol |
Here's something I'm going to use for a little "lesson"... This graphic shows the NAV.... NET ASSET VALUE of the fund by year. Please note that if you were contributing the SAME dollar amount paycheck to paycheck - you would have BOUGHT a lot more shares when the fund had a LOW NAV... and you'd have bought FEWER shares when the NAV was high.... and this averaging in can really help your performance in the long run.
If someone would have told you in 2008 to buy twice as many shares of something that had gotten killed --- you'd be saying "NO WAY JOSE".... but of course the mutual fund is doing it for you... so in this case a mutual fund can be beneficial.
This particular fund has a decent performance. So many do not.
Year-End NAVs
Year NAV
2011 $10.32
2010 $12.08
2009 $9.03
2008 $5.57
2007 $11.02
2006 $13.04
2005 $12.29
2004 $13.31
2003 $12.14
2002 $7.37