- quote -

figured out what I was doing wrong with the Std Dev calculation. I was
basing it on the calculated monthly returns as opposed to the prices. I
would still be interested in a link to a newsgroup or forum devoted to the
math associated with financial planning.

Thanks again,
JW

"Mark Freeland" <nNeEwTs[at]nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:gq87a9$7ir$1[at]adenine.netfront.net...
- quote -

Could you recommend a newsgroup that I could post some math questions with
respect to the data I am downloading.
I'm trying to calculate an Annualized Standard Deviation from the downloaded
data and the SD that I come up with just doesn't seem right. I calculated
SD's before and when I throw know data into the program I've created the
answers come out right but when I put calculate monthly values, or daily
values, for say VFINX , Vanguards S&P 500, for last year I get 2.25 which
doesn't seem right.

Thanks again
JW


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"JW" <jw[at]ungodly.net> wrote in message
news:s7qdnRDvW5_VEFrUnZ2dnUVZ_i2dnZ2d[at]earthlink.com...
- quote -

I'm not going back through 23 years of dividends, but spot checking the most
recent four years, the data looks fine and quite believable that the
dividend distributions (both capital gains and ordinary dividends) account
for a trebling of values over a quarter century.

Instead of downloading, look at these monthly figures on the screen. In
that format, Yahoo shows you the dividend distributions. You'll see that
Magellan had a 10.4c distribution last December 5. So the adjusted value
for Nov is around 10.4c less than the actual close ($43.72 vs. $43.83).
That's because if you'd purchased $43.72 worth of the fund in Nov, you'd
have bought almost a full share; the dividend you'd have gotten (almost
10.4c) would have been enough to buy the remaining fraction of a share.

So, the adjusted price of $43.72 represents the price you would have had to
pay then to wind up with exactly one share now.

Look at the June 08 prices. The adjusted price is $79.87, while the actual
price is $80.07. That's a difference of 20c, nearly double the original
difference of 10.4c. The reason is that the price of the share in June was
nearly double the price of the share when the dividend was paid. Everything
doubles, including the spread. Then (going backward in time) a $2.87
dividend was paid in May. So the spread increases from around 20c to around
$3.04 in April '08. And it just keeps going like this.

Given dividends of substantial size (7% in Dec 07, 5% in May 07, 3% in Dec
06, 20%(!) in May 06), it is quite believable that the adjusted price 23
years ago is as low as Yahoo reports.

Mark Freeland
nNeEwTs[at]nyc.rr.com

I've been downloading historical stock prices from Yahoo for an older
version of a program.
The data comes down in a csv file with the columns as follows:
Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Volume,Adj Close
I thought I should be using the Adjusted Closing values but then I looked at
the older years and am confused as to why they differ so much from the
Closing values. I thought I new the difference between the 2 values but my
understanding does not account for the large differences. What am I missing
or is the downloaded data incorrect?
Examples:
FMAGX
2009-03-02,36.87,43.86,36.40,42.64,000,42.64
2009-02-02,42.24,45.50,38.92,39.18,000,39.18
2009-01-02,47.39,48.65,41.37,42.40,000,42.40
..
..
..
1986-11-03,52.13,52.31,50.39,52.28,000,8.73
1986-10-01,49.70,51.76,49.70,51.76,000,8.64
1986-09-02,53.18,53.59,48.51,49.19,000,8.21

VFINX
2009-03-02,64.83,73.57,62.65,71.20,000,71.20
2009-02-02,76.05,80.25,67.99,67.99,000,67.99
2009-01-02,85.75,86.02,74.17,76.10,000,76.10
..
..
..
1987-05-01,28.90,29.67,28.00,29.23,000,16.90
1987-04-01,29.29,30.26,27.99,28.93,000,16.73
1987-03-27,29.66,29.66,28.97,29.22,000,16.90

Thanks,
JW