Personal check up...Funds off their 52 week high

bee · June 2013

I took some data from Yahoo Finance today so I could get a snapshot of where my mutual funds are today relative to their 52 week high. Many funds made their high within the last few months. For some funds, like VGPMX, its been awhile since it enjoyed that pinnacle. Anyway, here are my results:

-data and table under review-

My take away from this self assessment:
Yield matters. Eight funds moved from negative to positive for a 1 year time frame as a result of their yield...these funds are color coded green. One fund, PETDX, went from Red (a price drop of more than 16%) to green (a gain of 16%) due to its yeild...the magic of derivatives. Yield helped move 6 of my funds from yellow (4-10% price drop) to blue (less than 4% price drop). Holding any of these funds long term is made easier as a result of their yield.

VGPMX is in the red zone and still seems to be under price pressure, down over 32% from its high price for the year. I am not ready to pick a bottom for PM funds, but do hold this fund long term and will add to it at some point. As funds move into the Red Zone (10% or more off their highs) I try to determine whether they are good canididates to dollar cost average into or a bad investment choice that needs to be cut loose. If I believe the fund is a good long term investment I try to muster up the will to move cash into these investments. My more volatile investment dip into the red zone more frequently and when it happens I have to remind myself that it is a buying opportunity at some point along that dip. Again, picking bottom is not my favorite past time so I am still training myself to this type of discipline.

All of my Green funds have bond exposure. Four are all bond, they are: USIBX, USHYX, PONDX, and TGBAX. Three funds have a combination of equities and bonds, they are RPSIX, BUFBX and PRWCX. PETDX is a derivaitive based Real Estate fund that I honestly don't completely understand. It always nice to have an investment buddy or two that provide some reassurance that investing is still a worthy pursuit when markets dip, fall, or tumble.

Thoughts welcome.

VintageFreak · June 2013

When you say yields, you are saying dividends. In taxable account you want capital appreciation more than dividends. In retirement accounts you are right I think.

Also NAVs are adjusted on their dividends. Did you get dividend adjusted NAV from Yahoo. If you got raw NAV then with every distribution - cap gains and dividends - NAV drop will be more pronounced. A lot of times on yahoo, the charts are also not adjusted for distributions so you see unnecessary spikes downward for various funds.

So not saying you numbers are wrong, but they may not be 100% accurate.