Thought I would give a final update, in case anyone was interested and
respond to the comments thus far.

Diversified claims they are not at fault and they sent the money to the
address given on the rollover form I completed. They did not include
the account number on the check as they consider that a security issue.
One of my colleagues had his money send electronically, mine and most
of my other colleagues were sent by check. Perhaps the lesson learned
here is to include appropriate routing numbers and get assurances that
funds would be transferred electronically.

Fidelity did finally deposit the check in my IRA brokerage account as
desired. Then they credited my IRA account with 4 days interest based
on the money market fund that serves to hold cash in that brokerage
account. They did this without being prompted. I've always got good
service from Fidelity and this shows that they are will to make good to
a reasonable extent. Obviously I still didn't make up for the market
performance lost.

Regarding the question of whether I would have paid them if the market
had dropped during the transfer period. The point is it is not their
money to invest. In the case of Diversified, the longer it takes the
check to clear, the more interest they make while my money sits in
their account, so they are making money off of my money without regard
to the market performance. With respect to Fidelity, yes I agree that
all I should expect is money market rate and that is what they gave me.
It was just frustrating that I missed a significant up-turn when I've
had the funds picked out for over 4 months and I have a spreadsheet
that calculates the amount to put in each fund when the money arrives.
My diversification plan is quite automated. :-)

About 5 of my colleagues also had their checks correctly deposited by
Fidelity. Several others (> 5) are being sent their check to their home
address which they will have to turn around and send back to their IRA
provider. So I guess I should count myself lucky.

I moved some of the money into the bond funds, commodity fund, some
international funds and some domestic value funds last Friday. Today,
with NASDAQ and financials down, oil and consumer staples up, I focused
on the remaining funds that have a larger percentage of their assets in
software, hardware and financials. I've still got about 3/5's of the
cash to invest in the other funds I've select, but I'm willing to wait
for a dip since it is currently getting about 5% return in the money
market fund.

Dave

"Dave" <DrDavey[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1155843742.901710.75690[at]74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
- quote -


Would you give th money back if you had the reverse? If the market
had gone *down* and you were unjustly enriched by the few points
you didn't drop while they were locating your money?

Didn't think so.

- quote -

None that I'm aware of. I don't think such a law could exist. If it
did, and you were rolling the money over to another 401k, the law would
have to take in to account the investment opportunities in the target
401k and that would just be messy. In the case of a rollover to an
IRA, what would prvent you from going back to Diversified and saying,
"Well... I WAS going to invest that money in this tiny little startup
whose stock value increased by 1000% over the past few days."

That being said, there might be a contractual obligation to provide the
rollover in a timely manner (though I doubt it). If you're really
determined to track this down, I would start with your company's plan
document with Diversified. That will spell out the terms of your 401k.
It'll probably also reference other documents, which you can then look
up.

--Bill

"Dave" <DrDavey[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1155843742.901710.75690[at]74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Would you try and get performance earnings if the market dropped 500 points
over the last week? The best you can hope for is money market fund rate.

704set


======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
Please trim the post to which you are responding. "Trim" means that except for a few lines to add context, the previous post is deleted.

My 401(k) rollover to my IRA has been lost, sort of, and I am wondering
if the 401(k) provider is legally responsible for lost earnings since
the money has not been invested during the recent market up turn. I
filed paper work with Diversified Investment Advisors to have my 401(k)
from a former employer rolled to my rollover IRA at Fidelity
Investments. My 401(k) account was liquidated on August 8th. However,
Diversified sent the check to the wrong part of Fidelity - they sent it
to a Fidelity Retirement Investments which is the subsiderary that
handles 401(k)s. When Fidelity Retirement Investments received the
check (supposedly on August 14th), they did not know what it was for
and just held it. They would have held it 7 days and then sent it by
mail to my home address. Fortunately, the problem occurred for several
people and it was discovered and communicated to everyone.

So at this point, my former employer is trying to get the check
transferred from Fidelity Retirement to Fidelity Investments, but they
are not sure they can. The other option is to have Diversified cut a
new check and send it to the correct address. The form I filed with
Diversified for the rollover had the correct address and I have copies
of this form, so it is clear Diversified made the error.

In the mean time, Diversified still has my money since the check has
not been cashed, but I am not getting any earnings from this money. I
know exactly how I plan to invest this money when it finally shows up
in my IRA account, so I can calculate to the penny how much earnings I
am loosing because of their mistake. Are there any laws regarding
timeliness of money transfers that make Diversified liable for my lost
earnings? Any advice appreciated.

Dave