Run a backward look at a fund's performance

[tomseeley]

I want to run a backward look at how various funds I might have invested in just for the fun of it. I want to see how these other funds might have performed had I reinvested distributions AND taken the other withdrawals along the way that I have actually taken from the funds I've actually owned. By doing the analysis myself, using FM, I know how the yield, return, etc., reported by FM was computed and I can make some sense of it, compared with how FM reports how my real funds have performed over the same backward periods.

I know how to fill in the historical daily prices. But I don't know how to fill in the effects of reinvesting all the distributions along the way.

If I create a fake fund and put $10K into it 10 years ago, and I use historical prices to fill in the prices over the 10 years, does that automatically also reinvest all the distributions that were reinvested along the way, or does it ONLY give me each day's prices, which would have changed each time there had been a distribution? If the latter, then I'd have to find and manually enter every distribution wouldn't I, to get the report of performance I'm looking for, wouldn't I?

[Mark]

Hi tomseeley,

You can use "Yahoo (Adjusted Historical)" and it will retrieve prices that are back adjusted for distributions and splits. You could also use "Yahoo (Historical)" and with the Professional/Advisor version you can choose the options to retrieve distributions as transactions, and have them reinvested or distributed.

[tomseeley]

Thanks. I knew about getting historical prices, but I didn't know that the pro version would also let me get back years' distributions.