In microsoft.public.money, Avogadro wrote:

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TR YTD is not annualized. Ann.Ret is annualized. While the numbers
for things you have held only for a few days is meaningless, I still
think that IRR is suitable for the Ann.Ret column.

Also, you may want to add in the PriceAppreciation column, which
does not include dividends. That can be useful in selecting what to
sell for a tax loss.


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The AsOf date in the upper righthand corner may be of interest, tho
it is not going to generate the actual report that you seek.

Thank you Cal and Ron for your suggestions. I now know Money uses
Internal Rate of Return (IRR) for calculating the TR YTD (total return
year to date). Makes sense - using an Annualized IRR, however, does
not. But alas, that is just my opinion. By working through many
of my transactions and ensuring their is an accurate purchase price
(several had zero for the price), I'm able to show a reasonable IRR for
my current portfolio. All of my dividends had an accompanying buy
transacations - but it is good to know to be on the look out for this
in the future.

Now, on to a Year over Year IRR report!!! I want/need to know, how I'm
doing against the S&P over the past 5 years on my brokerage account,
IRA, wife's IRA, etc. I'm a little afraid to find out. I'll start
a new thread if I have any questions with the reporting.

Thanks again.

In microsoft.public.money, Avogadro wrote:

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The calculation method is described in
support.microsoft.com/kb/131664/en-us

See below:

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Make sure that the transactions are Buys. Also, when you download a
dividend, you should download a Buy at the same time. Alternatively,
if only the Dividend gets downloaded, manually change each to
ReinvestDividend. A ReinvestDividend should be the same as both a
Buy and a Dividend.

You can get a transaction report and customize by security. You can
also easily view the transactions for FDRXX by double-clicking the
entry in the Portfolio view.

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I would like to see how your analysis comes out.

If you are new to Money, I suggest you switch to advanced register
and reports if you have not done so already. In reports, try
Customize and see what all you can do.

On 21 Aug 2006 09:44:52 -0700, "Avogadro" <tmckinn[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

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I'm a little surprised.

Since mutual fund NAV's are usually posted only daily, I would think that to
calculate total return YTD, you should be comparing the closing price from
12/30/2005 with the closing price of 8/18/2006 and add in the dividends. I
don't believe the price for 8/21 (today) has been published yet.

12/30/2005 8.83 close
5/12/2006 0.02 dividend
5/12/2006 0.16 dividend
8/18/2006 9.04 close


I get 4.42% vs Money's 4.3%. Even though the difference is small, I would have
thought it to be even smaller.

--ron

Thanks Cal -
I'm running Money 2006. Yes, the column heading (formula) I'm looking
at is TR YTD (Total Return on your investment since the beginning of
the year).

1 - I bought some FFFFX in December of 2005. The TR YTD says my return
is 4.3%,the actual return for 2006 YTD according to Fidelity's price on
1/3/06 and 8/21/06 is 0.2%.

I notice that I earned a dividend of 60 shares in May 2006. I wonder
if this is difference, I bet MS adds the dividend in when it calculates
my return. Fair enough. Where can I get detailed breakdowns on the
assumptions MS Money uses in their formulae?

2 - I have an IRA for years and years. I recently left a company where
I had a 401(k). I rolled over my 401(k) into my IRA. My IRA now shows
a 99.8% return. I can see the problem is the cost basis for 2 of my
funds are totally wrong. I just updated the price - nice feature that
MS Money gives you a button to update historic prices! I wonder why it
didn't do this when I transferred the funds in first place...

However, my FDRXX (Fidelity Cash Reserves) is still showing a 920.1%
return.

Upon further analysis. MS Money probably isn't calculating wrong (with
the exception of FDRXX). I need to better understand the formula
assumptions and fiddle with the cost basis. I have a B.S. in Finance
and have worked in Accounting/Finance for Fortune 500 companies for the
past 15 years. Updating my portfolio is always a confusing exercise
for me. I can't imagine non-finance people using MS Money or Quicken
for that matter.



Cal Learner-- MVP wrote:

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In microsoft.public.money, Avogadro wrote:

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Do you have an indication that the portfolio manager is not
computing total returns for the accounts correctly? What program are
you running?

Are there some in-depth articles on how to accurately show your actual
return at the Account level? For example, I would like to see my
actual return (growth/shrinkage) of my transactions in my IRA
throughout the year. I want the actual return of the purchases not my
monthly contribution.

I find it quite frustrating to get the portfolio manager to reflect
calculations correctly.

Thanks.