It appears that M*'s annual mutual fund performance data only goes back ten years. If I'm wrong, please tell me how to unlock "older" annual performance or where I might find annual data going back 25 years or longer. I want to see how each fund performed at least back 25 years and preferably even longer. (And yes, I realize that the older the data, the greater the likelihood of changes in management, etc. that could discount the value of some historical data.)
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M* Charts go quite far back although they are acting up this morning (try later from the following link). https://community.morningstar.com/s/feed/0D53o00005E8h5tCAB
Portfolio Visualizer data go back tp 1985. PV LINK
While I prefer M*'s legacy pages for most purposes, the interactive charts have the advantage of showing you the cumulative gain in percentage between the dates you specify. So if you give dates of 12/31/97 and 12/31/98, it will tell you the annual gain for 1998 without your needing to do the long division.
Yahoo's finance pages also provide figures that one can use to deduce annual returns. Select the historical range of data to cover the years of interest. Then look at the adjusted price on Dec 31 of successive years and divide to get the growth for the selected year. Adjusted prices incorporate the effect of dividends, splits, etc., so it represents total return. You can download the data and let Excel do the division for you.
https://finance.yahoo.com/
There are minor differences. For DODGX, the M* interactive chart reports a gain from the end of 2020 (12/31/2020) to the end of 2021 (12/31/2021) of 31.73%. This is also what M* reports in digital form on the fund's performance page, confirming that these are the right endpoints to use.
M*'s performance page for DODGX
Yahoo Finance reports adjusted closing prices of 186.20 and 245.26 at the end of 2020 and 2021 respectively, for a gain of 31.72%. Going to the horse's mouth, D&C reports a 2021 return of 31.68%.
Yahoo Finance, DODGX data
D&C performance page
This illustrates why I try to go as far upstream as possible to the data source if accuracy is important. One can find 10 years of performance data in a fund's prospectus, so by looking at a prospectus that's 15 years old one can get the annual returns for years 1997-2006, and by looking at a prospectus that's 5 years old one can get the annual returns for years 2007-2016.
SEC fund filing search page: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/mutualsearch.html
For example, for DODGX, here are the bar charts for those 20 years and the prospectuses they come from:
Dodge and Cox Prospectus, May 1, 2007 Dodge and Cox Prospectus, May 1, 2017
Both Yahoo Finance and Stockcharts use adjusted-prices (ratio-adjusted for distributions). These provide good enough approximations for cumulative or annualized TRs for up to 10 years, in my experience. Beyond 10 yrs, the approximation errors become noticeable, but still OK for most purposes. Yahoo Finance often delays making adjustments, or, some skipped ones are never fixed. As internal details are not visible at Stockcharts, I keep my fingers crossed there.
It bugs me that Yahoo Finance provides adjusted-prices in tabular form but charts only actual-prices. So, Yahoo Finance charts are mostly useless except for short-term. Why not provide charts for BOTH actual-prices AND adjusted-prices like Stockcharts does (with _TICKER and TICKER, respectively).
The SEC/Edgar is a great resource. Each fund prospectus and semiannual/annual report has 5-10 years of TR data and one can go back years. This does require lot of patience and hard work that can be repeated manually only for a handful of funds.
SP500 ETF and OEF Max-view, Image URL at host https://i.ibb.co/D8FC7gG/Screenshot-2022-02-19-17-50-29.png
Now, if Yahoo would only report accurately. FGMNX had three losing calendar years: the two you mentioned and also 2021. Yahoo show 2021's return as N/A, though it knows better. Yahoo gives December 31 adjusted closing figures as 11.58 (2021) and 11.68 (2020) for a loss of 0.85%, matching Fidelity's official figure.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/performance-and-risk/31617K105?type=sq-NavBar
FWIW, according to the Yahoo performance tab, the fund's worst calendar quarters were in 1987: 2Q (-2.48%) and 3Q (-3.40%). The worst three month drawdown, irrespective of month boundaries, was around 6½%, from the close on July 17, 1987 to the close on Oct 16 (a Friday) or Oct 19 (a Monday) 1987. Nearly double the calendar quarter max loss.
I got this by downloading the daily adjusted close figures from Yahoo and playing with Excel to approximate quarterly returns day by day.
I also found other inconsistent data in the performance tab to deem unreliable.
Considering the data source, it does not surprise me that some posters have discovered inaccuracies.
Then there's FGMNX's YTD performance as of now (Feb 22, 2022 close). The authoritative figure from Fidelity is -2.42%. The M* figure on the fund's quote page is -2.42%. Yahoo's fund summary page reports -2.43%.
One of these is not like the others.
1. Data-feed errors are generally not fixed. This I have noticed at other sites too. Reason probably is that it is pointless to correct data-feed errors manually as the next data-feed refresh may just restore those. Fund families whose data are involved don't care - this I KNOW from my prior emails to YF and fund families.
2. Yahoo Finance does process some of its data. Adjusted-prices is something unique to Yahoo Finance (and Stockcharts, etc). Not everyone is sold on this concept (others do Growth-of-10K). Another area is Treasury rates ^TNX, ^TYX, etc where YF doesn't follow the typical 10x rate scale convention (CBOE, Stockcharts, etc) and that leads to some fantastic transient error in that data at YF on some afternoons.
3. I also suspect that in adjusted-price calculations, YF rounds results to 2 decimals in EACH step. This rounding error then propagates and becomes noticeable for periods larger than 10 years. Conceptually, the results from adjusted-prices and Growth-of-10K should be closer to what they actually are.
Under Data Disclaimer, Yahoo Finance provides multiple sources of its data.
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/finance-for-web/SLN2310.html?locale=en_US
"US quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE, and NYSE American when available from Nasdaq Last Sale and if not available it will appear delayed from the consolidated tape. See delay times for other exchanges below. Quotes are updated automatically but will be turned off after 25 minutes of inactivity.
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