Mutual Fund Prices

[investor]

For mutual fund positions, in comparing FM pricing (from Yahoo historical) to the fund statements, the prices do not match. FM/fund statements do match when using MSN historical. Why would this be? or should I not rely on Yahoo for mutual fund prices as others may be having the same issue? thank you

[Mark]

Hello investor,

Are you sure you're using "Yahoo (Historical)", and not "Yahoo (Adjusted Historical)"? The regular "Historical" one should be retrieving the actual closing prices, which should match your fund statement. The "Adjusted Historical" server does back-adjust prices for distributions and splits, so you wouldn't want to use that server when you're trying to get actual closing prices.

If you are using the "Historical" server, and the quote isn't matching, make sure you're looking at the quote in the Data Register with the "Prices" data type. Also, browse to Yahoo's web site and look up the quote for the mutual fund in question. Click on the link on the left hand side to "Historical Prices", and go look at what price Yahoo has. It should be the same as in Fund Manager. Is Yahoo's price correct on their website?

[investor]

Hi Mark - am using Yahoo Historical & referencing the price in the data register; below is how price/value appears on portfolio value report. Yahoo reports 10/31/07 closing prices as 16.73 & 24.05, respectively. 24.05 agrees with the fund statement; 16.73 does not, should be 16.91. I even re-ran a "Yahoo historical price retrieve from 10/28/07 through today and still came up with the same results.

The following 2 sources report the correct prices:

http://investing.businessweek.com/resea ... ol=TGDIX.O

and MSN

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/ch ... &CP=0&PT=4

This is the first time I've had this issue for these investments.

Thank you.

Chris

Portfolio Value
10/31/2007

Investment Name % Price Shares Value ($)
TCW Diversified Value Fund I Class 4.3 16.73 2,262.428 37,850.42
TCW Value Opportunities Fund Class I 5.5 23.69 2,046.382 48,478.79

[Mark]

Hi Chris,

Interesting, it does look like Yahoo has the wrong historical prices on this investment for some reason. If you go look at:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=TGDIX

This is where FM is getting the data when it retrieves from Yahoo (Historical). You can see Yahoo is reporting a price of $16.73 on 10/31/2007. Apparently (according to your other sources) this price is wrong. You might want to send Yahoo an email about this. Usually they are pretty good about getting any such pricing errors corrected. You can just send them the above URL, and your 2 URLs below, and ask them to investigate why their pricing seems wrong.

In the mean time, you might want to switch and use MSN Historical for this fund until that issue gets fixed.

[investor]

Mark - here is the answer directly from TCW for future reference and other users.

Thank you.

Chris



In response to our conversation about the pricing discrepancy on Yahoo for Diversified Value as of 10/31/2007 I talked to our Mutual Fund Department. They reminded me that because the TCW Funds fiscal year end is 10/31/2007 we pay out dividends on the following business day.


Yahoo shows a closing price adjusted for dividends and splits. At no other time should there be a discrepancy.

[Mark]

Hi Chris,

The dividend should not be the reason for a difference. Notice there are 2 columns, one is labeled "Close" and the other "Adj Close". The "Adj Close" column does back adjust for dividends and splits, but the "Close" should be the actual closing price on that date, and is the price used by FM when using the "Yahoo (Historical)" server.

I'm not sure if Yahoo has updated the pricing here, or if I just misread it earlier, but when I just checked now, the correct price is now showing. It is showing a close price of $16.91 on 10/31/2007. It kind of looks like they fixed whatever problem was there earlier. You might try re-retrieving now.

[investor]

Hi Mark - I see the correction to 16.91 for TGDIX - thanks. Yahoo still shows 23.69 for TGVOX so I'll contact them to see what the problem is. Happy Thanksgiving.

Chris