A mutual fund is essentially just a basket of individual stocks/bonds/whatever. Within that basket the fund managers are constantly selling/buying and receiving dividends. The IRS has special rules for mutual funds which allow them to not pay taxes on the capital gains/dividends generated provided they pass through almost all of the proceeds from said activities to the shareholder within the calendar year. So dividends are often paid on some set schedule but capital gains are generally retained within the fund till the end of the year(because losses can reduce gains but can’t be distributed to a shareholder).
So on to why your fund dropped: in mid December everyone starts distributing these gains and as we know when a fund makes a distribution its NAV drops by an equal amount. For example a fund that was trading at $10 and had It’s value made up of $9 worth of stock and $1 worth of cash to be distributed now no longer has that $1. So it’ll drop by 10% because of that fact. Don’t worry, you didn’t lose any money because the $1 was paid to you in cash(and in most cases reinvested in the form of buying more shares).
There isn’t any value created or lost in a distribution(except to taxes) it’s just a necessary taxable transaction that must occur because of how mutual funds are structured. ETFs are technically subject to this as well but since most follow passive cap weighted strategies or use the creation/redemption to wash out appreciated shares so they don’t usually have capital gains realized to distribute.
Also please feel free to add whatever questions/comments you have to this sticky.
Here’s a quick way to see what capital gains estimates/distribution dates are for most funds:https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/56970/2020-capital-gains-estimatesCtrl + f your fund family. Chances are it’s on one of these two pages. If not, google search “______ funds capital gains distributions 2020”
Please note we’ll be deleting any threads on the subject and pointing people here in order to keep the clutter down.
