2007-2017 recovery for 23 401(k) Index Funds. What's going on here?

[carbon]

Hi all,

My company's 401(k) plan gives me about 20 investment options. I've read the prospectuses for many of them; at some point, my eyes glaze over. Sensing another downturn in the winds, I wanted to understand how comparably they've performed over the past decade.

The following table, generated via Python + API, presents what I've found: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_d7X9cnpmS94WJnNH3S7S0wi9Cujo7SXcAfbJ_zN4cg/edit?usp=sharing

I do know these are simplistic figures (e.g., dividends aren't taken into account, etc) but that they're indicative nonetheless.

My questions:

Fidelity's 'convenient' target-date funds (FF*) seem to have performed terribly. Many required nearly a decade to recover their price. They do have slightly lower annual maintenance (just below 0.8%) and I understand that these are re-balanced instruments. Of course, past performance doesn't indicate future results. But what's going on here?

Am I looking at the wrong thing to analyze the ten-year record?

 

[tomcat4260]

@carbon Why not just compare fund returns over time? The fund companies calculate the actual amount of information you are looking for (albeit a lot easier to understand) and they then present it in a way that is comparable.

Let me see if I understand what you did here fully:

You wanted to find out who the basketball players that scored points the fastest (an important distinction to who scores the most). Seems simple enough.

You then took as data points the last ten years worth of games. Next you pulled the game where each player scored the LEAST amount of points during that stretch and calculated the time it took them to play a game where they scored the MOST amount of points. And then ascribed some sort of value to the number of days between those points. You are then trying to conclude which player is the best scorer.

Why not just look at points per game average?

 

[resjudicata]

@carbon Your process is a bizarre way of going about this, and it's so bizarre that I don't even know to suggest how to fix it.

 

[carbon]

@resjudicata Let me try it this way: if I had been investing in many of the Fidelity instruments, wouldn't it be the case that my retirement portfolio would finally, now, be recovering?

 

[resjudicata]

@carbon No, that's not the case, but that's not really a good way of looking at it either.

 

[tigerchick224]

@carbon You aren't just ignoring dividends, but capital gains distributions. If a fund distributes 10%, you're assuming a ten percent loss in account value.

 

[jegblg144]

@carbon You are certainly down a rabbit hole and need to take many steps back. Why would one fund outperform another? Is the past 10 years performance a scientific explanation of future performance in the slightest?

You are trying to pick winners. But you can't. There are no winners. There are no losers. There only is market and maintenance fee's.

Spend time understanding the difference between 0.8% and 0.03% maintenance fee's and grasp exactly how much fucking money that is over a lifetime.