I guess we now know why Bill Gross is the best. Check out Pimco Total Return (PTTAX PIMCO:Tot Rtn;A (FUND)) at BigCharts.com. The chart doesn't accurately reflect the growth of invested capital as found in a report at Morningstar.com. So what is Billy Bob up to here? When I sell the shares I get NAV or Net Asset Value. Dividends are cool, but the NAV is just as important as capital appreciation. So what up Bill? Why has NAV gone down so much? For me it might not be much but for you it's $0.04 per day times (90,000,000,000 divided by NAV(=10.45 as of 11/03/2005))(=8,612,440,191)? And what's 12,000,000 anyway, we can round a little her, it's only fractions of pennies for the shareholder. Let's see, what does that come to: $344 million a day; and that's from just a $0.04 change in NAV for one day. Would that be, your Christmas bonus there Bill? Where did it go?
Here's my question: If this is just one fund, abeit the largest, how much money is gained and lost and skimmed from the markets each day? The average investor does not know the size of these markets, let alone fathom the depths. There are HUGE amounts of money removed from investors every day. Yet to the average investor, it only seems like pennies. And they only complain a little when they are minus 10%. And even when the loses amount to 30% or even 40% they believe the Wall Street pundits when they say "over the long term we can expect around 10% return on investment."
My whole point here is that HUGE sums of money can be hidden from the average investor. Also, there are ways to get it back. You will not get your slice by reading the Wall Street Journal, or listening to someone who will take 2% of your entire portfolio each year regardless of performance. Want to know more? Check out my reading list.
