You may have noticed that your mutual fund company is very good at giving you general information about your investment, but is a little light on providing details. The funds themselves tend to focus on the results over time, but you would like to see some day-to-day price information. A mutual fund's website can tell how the fund performed over the last 10 years, but cannot tell what the share price was 10 years ago. Fortunately, most financial websites readily provide this type of data.
Step 1
Look up the stock ticker symbol for the mutual fund in question. Yes, it's a mutual fund, but the term "stock ticker" is used for funds as well as stocks. Mutual funds have five-letter stock tickers, and your fund's ticker will be found on the fund's home or overview page.
Step 2
Enter the mutual fund stock ticker into the "Get Quote" box of one of the major financial websites, like Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance, which provide historical share price information for mutual funds.
Step 3
Select the "Historical Prices" or "Historical Quotes" menu link on the mutual fund quote screen.
Step 4
Enter the date or range of dates of interest for your mutual fund. Some let you put in a single day; most others allow ranges of dates. Make notes of the fund prices on your days of interest. The official term for a mutual fund share price is net asset value (NAV).
References
Tips
- The share price of a mutual fund is set once a day after the stock and bond markets close. As a result, the high, low and close prices for a fund on a particular date will be the same value.
- Yahoo! Finance includes an "Adjusted Close" column with its price data. This number is calculated adjusting for dividend and capital gains distributions. It is handy for calculating total returns from a fund, but has no relavance concerning the actual share price on that date.
Writer Bio
Tim Plaehn has been writing financial, investment and trading articles and blogs since 2007. His work has appeared online at Seeking Alpha, Marketwatch.com and various other websites. Plaehn has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the U.S. Air Force Academy.