Here is an example of how figures can be misleading,. I am referring to the
Portfolio Performance stats that are given for your investments compared to
Dow Jones and S&P.
What happens is, say you have $20,000 invested in mutual funds, and YTD your
return is 15%. Your mutual fund declared a big capital gain/dividend, which
you automatically reinvested. Yesterday your $20,000 drops to $19,000,
dropping your annualized return of course. Today, it's back up to $20,000,
but with a $1,000 reinvested at today's prices. So now you have the same
money as 2 days ago, but your return is no longer 15%, but it's say 13%. In
a way that's right, in a way that's not right. It seems to me, that logic
would conclude that holding 100 IBM shares bought in 1935 is doing much
worse than the market <g>.