Understanding yield, dividend, expense ratio and others related terms in a mutual fund
I have 2 related questions about mutual funds which I bolded.
I was thinking about buying some shares in a mutual fund, such as VanEck International Investors Gold Fund Class A (INIVX). I am confused what exactly some terms means and how they factor into the cost. For example, let's say I buy 100 class A shares in INIVX at each (for a total market value of ,000). INIVX has the following data:
Expense ratio: 1.45 %
Last reported dividend: .37
Yield: 3.66 %
(from Yahoo Finance finance.yahoo.com/quote/INIVX?p=INIVX).
OR
Expense ratio: 1.45 %
Last reported dividend: .3718
Yield: 3.79 %
Front load: 5.75 %
(from Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/INIVX:US))
I view both yahoo finance and bloomberg as good sources, and while the slight difference in dividend and yield I could understand, I don't understand why yahoo finance didn't mention anything about the front load fee?
Also, back to the example, let's assume that there is in fact a front load fee of 4.5% for this mutual fund, so that my original ,000 investment buys me 5 worth of shares of this fund. Let's also assume that over a year the price of the fund goes up 5% (to .50), and that I now want to cash out. So, I subtract the expense ratio from the yield to get 3.79% - 1.45 % = 2.34% in net yield plus the 5% mutual fund price increase for a total of 7.34% increase, which would put my 5 at approximately ,025 for a net increase in my bank account of 2.5%?
Does the above calculation look correct?
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There are a number of problems with your analyisis..
You are treating the expense ratio as if it is a sales fee. It is annual fee that all funds charge and is comprised of all fees incurred by the fund and it is deducted from the AUM before calculating the NAV of the fund which is the price that you get if you sell.
The expense ratio is expressed as a percentage of AUM. Both numbers can vary throughout the year and the size of the variance will depend on whether it's an actively manage fund (higher expenses) or an ETF merely duplicating an index such as the SPY, IWM, etc. (lower).
If you invest ,000 in a 4.5% front load fund trading at , 5 is put to work. You own 95.5 shares. If share price rises 5% to .50 in one year, you end up with ,002.75 (0.275 %).
Where this goes awry is if there is a dividend/distribution. You have assumed that the distribution is a profit. It is not.
Share price is reduced by the amount of the distribution on the ex-dividend date. The distribution does not provide you with any total return. So if share price is 5% higher after one year and you then receive a 37 cent distribution, you would own 95.5 shares at .13 (worth 7.41) and you will then be entitled to receive a distribution of .34 (95.5 shares * 37 cts). The sum of these is ,002.75 which is the same amount as in the previous calculation where there was no dividend.
So this may clear a few things up:
"yield" indicates how much the mutual fund pays out in dividends/capital gains/etc. These have zero net effect from a wealth standpoint, meaning that the value you get in cash is deducted from the price of the fund. If you reinvest dividends automatically then these are of no consequence to you - you'll have more units that are worth less per unit. You can, of course, just keep the cash and/or invest it in something else.
The expense ratio is accounted for automatically in the price of the fund. So if the actual market price goes up 5%, that means that the value of the fund's assets actually went up 6.45% (the expenses are taken out of the assets of the fund)
So using your numbers, if you have ,000 to invest in a fund with a 4.5% front-end-load fee, you will get 5 of the fund. If the market value of that fund goes up 5%, then at the end of the year you'll have 5 * 1.05 = 03 for a gain of 0.3% (not coincidentally close to the return minus the fee). Note that a front-load fee is only taken out when you buy the fund, so the longer you keep the fund the more time you have to recoup the front-end cost.
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