It’s Not What You Buy, It’s When

Posted on May 28, 2010

Filed Under Mutual Funds

As with most mutual fund investors, you are well aware of fund performance reports. You know, the ones that show one, three, five, and ten year returns.

So that reflects what you, the mutual fund investor, would have made, right?

Probably not.

Morningstar calculates what it calls “investor returns,” which reveal how much real world investors actually gained or lost. The difference can be startling, and it stems from how the two types of returns are calculated.

The mutual fund takes a hypothetical starting amount and tracks it over time, assuming no contributions or withdrawals. Morningstar, on the other hand, uses a “dollar-weighted” formula which tracks cash flows into and out of the funds. And as we see all too often here at Weber Asset Management, mutual fund investors rush into funds after big gains have been posted, and sell after the fund drops.

It’s human nature to jump on a bandwagon, to follow the crowd, to follow the trend.

The Summer 2010 issue of U.S. News & World Report presents a few all-too-typical examples of what this means. They start with the popular, but highly volatile CGM Focus Fund. It can trumpet its impressive 18% annualized gain over the ten years ending April 16, 2010. But when Morningstar calculated how money sloshed in and out of the fund, it says, “the average investor lost about 11% in that time period.”

Ouch.

Then U.S. News goes on to show other sobering examples of how the average mutual fund investor fared poorly despite buying funds with top-notch performance figures.

Is that you?

Do you rush into hot funds? Do you sell after the hot fund has given back the lion’s share of its gains?  Obviously, if you do, you are not alone.

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COMMENTS

  • Ken Salzman

    So, do the long term performance numbers really argue strongly for a buy and hold strategy? Someone buying into the CMG fund would have obtained an 18% return if they just didn’t try to outsmart the market? What does this say about all “strategies” of investing that are not buy and hold? What does it say about contrarian investing strategies?

  • http://admin Ken Weber

    Buy-and-hold, which is sometimes called buy-and-pray, is considered the opposite of market timing – that is, an attempt to “outsmart the market” by getting in and out of the stock market. In the case of CGM, buy-and-hold would have worked perfectly – if, ahead of time, you knew that its ten year performance would be outstanding. Sadly, few of us have a reliable crystal ball, so choosing a fund to buy today, and steadfastly holding it for the next ten years, is a risky approach. Much better than either buy-and-hold or market timing, we believe, is to have a disciplined approach which combines an appropriate risk level with a consistent strategy for shifting assets into different market segments as conditions change.