Investors FastTrack

Quality Data for Investing Strategies

dividend adjustment

Data Quality – Screening Funds and ETFs

Here’s a great illustration of why you need dividend adjustments when analyzing funds and ETFs. QLENX (a lower risk AQR managed long short fund) has been popular with FastTrackers for a few years and it would be totally off your radar if you’re using Yahoo, CNBC, Fidelity, or any number of other free data outfits for charting and ranking.

Only FastTrack is adjusting for the 12/19/2017 dividends. Adjusting for dividends, a simple UPI ranking puts QLENX on top for the past three years. Without adjustments, QLENX’s risk/ return profile is misrepresented and pushed to #644 in the rank.

The black FastTrack chart illustrates the difference pretty clearly. The large dip towards the end of 2017 is the div payout of QLENX. The NAV drops, share price is reduced, but without accounting for the div payout you’ll get incorrect charting and ranking.

This is what FastTrack is known for. We’ve been providing this high quality, dividend adjusted data to professionals and individuals for over 27 years. Download a trial or give us a call.

QLENX in Red; SPY in green; Yahoo’s QLENX data in yellow; Three year chart; Feb 2015- Feb 2018
FastTrack’s dividend adjusted data shows the proper ranking.
Totally bogus ranking when data is not corrected for dividend payouts
 
No Divs – Incorrect chart from Finace.Yahoo.com
No Divs – Incorrect chart from CNBC.com
 
No Divs – Incorrect chart from Fidelity.com

Why Do Dividends Adjustments Matter?

FastTrack has been the premier provider of quality dividend adjusted ETF, fund, and stock data for many years. Serious investors know why dividends are critical. But, here’s a quick crash course in a few charts.

The 10 year chart below demonstrates the difference between dividend adjusted return vs non dividend adjusted return for VUSTX (Vanguard INV:Long-Term US Treasury).

This fund is one of the top five US funds in total assets (thus very popular and not picked to exaggerate the example)

vustx Div Comparison

The blue line represents VUSTX with no dividend adjustment and the gold line represents VUSTX with dividend adjustments. The blue line shows a return of 23.98%, when in reality the fund
returned 130.74%. That’s a whopping 106.76% difference in return!

Without accurate dividends, it is impossible to build the long-term, low volatility, low trading strategies that FastTrack is known for.

Another example is FMAGX (Fidelity Magellan), a very famous aggressive equity fund, since 9/1/1988 (the first date in the FastTrack database).

FMAGX div comparison

Again, we can see that dividends are essential to analyzing mutual funds accurately. Over the 23 year period, FMAGX appears to have posted a 38.45% gain without dividends, while accounting for dividends shows an accurate 550.92% gain over the period. Any analysis that does not account for distributions is not portraying the funds real total return. Dividend adjustment is essential for long term analysis.

In summary, FastTrack realizes the importance dividends make when assessing true total return
in investing strategies and in developing long-term trading systems. For the past 25 years the company’s mission has been to provide prompt, accurate, and comprehensive dividend adjustments. Getting an accurate view of a fund’s performance is essential to fund and ETF analysis.