Would it be too much to ask...Requesting Mutual Fund Provide Dividend Alert

bee

On the day that a mutual fund pays out a dividend, would it be too much to ask that a small "d" be place beside the apparent share price adjustment. For example today PTIAX (Bond Mutual Fund) had an "apparent" loss of (-.49%).

So, instead of this being a almost .5% loss for the day it is instead a .5% dividend.

Here's Yahoo's (totally useless) Feed:



Yahoo. chart is even more useless. At least M* charts are adjusted for dividends (performance chart vs price chart):
Here the difference...

Yahoo's YTD month price chart (notice the drop in price each month due to dividend pay out):


Now here is M* performance chart that includes the dividend as a component of performance (more accurate graph):


I have "bought enough donuts" in my day to know that today 11 cent loss on Yahoo's site is most likely a monthly distribution of dividend and the "apparent" loss in share price will soon be made up in additional shares or as an extra dividend in my account.

Why doesn't YahooFinance adapt performance charts or simply add an asterisk "*" or a letter "d" to the data so hypochondriacs like myself can redirect our misplaced anxiety to buying donuts?

VintageFreak

Hi Bee, I thought Yahoo has a separate link that plots the "D" you mentioned. At least several years back they did. You may also want to try Google Finance.

Finally, I think M* alert subscriptions will alert you when distributions are made (not sure if they alert you BEFORE they are made). May not be what you want, but it's something.

Finally, not sure exactly as to what you are trying to find/analyse, but Yahoo also has dividend adjusted NAV numbers (again, at least they used to).

AndyJ

VintageFreak said:

... Yahoo also has dividend adjusted NAV numbers (again, at least they used to).

"Used to" is the operative phrase. In the big redesign, they somehow forgot how to subtract distributions from the closing price to calculate adjusted price. Every security's historical price tables now have closing & adjusted prices that are exactly the same, across the board, stretching back to the Pleistocene. (They still enter distributions as they happen, just don't do any calculation with them.) They've received great piles of "suggestions" that they fix this incompetence, but so far have done nothing - and it's been many months now.

For a while there, you could go to Yahoo Canada, Yahoo New Zealand, etc., and use the old format with correct data, but one by one, each has been converted to the brave new format with the bad historical pricing. I guess you could say the old historical pricing is now historic.

Old_Joe

Hey, she only got $186m, what do you guys want, anyway? Give the lady a break!!

AndyJ

Old_Joe said:

Hey, she only got $186m, what do you guys want, anyway? Give the lady a break!!

It's about time she ran for office as a Great Bidness Person!

BenWP

FWIIW, neither Schwab nor TDA correctly compute loss/gain for mutual funds. Distributions are added to the cost basis, but you have to figure out total return by adding purchase price and distributions, then dividing by market value. Maybe someone else has an account at one of those shops and can tell me why I have to work to get a total return percentage effortlessly.

ibartman

Check out Bigcharts using Firefox'ish browser

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/interchart/interchart.asp?symb=dodgx&insttype=&time=8&freq=1

At left, you should see [Events & Fundamentals]
Click on it.
Choose [Dividends]