Philadelphia Reflections

Whatever else this shows, it is dramatic in showing how important it is to shelter large reinvested dividends from taxes, over the long haul. Therefore it shows why a buy and hold policy with index funds is just about the most vital feature of investing for children. There is far less incentive to switch around within an index fund, than when an active manager is trying to justify his salary. This is a serious downside to active investing.

Clean data is the secret to investment-analytic happiness, and what I've shown here makes very worried about the quality of the data.

I'm inclined to believe Central Securities' website about their share price and their dividends.

I believe somewhat less strongly about the quality of my IRR analysis; a second or third set of eyes might turn up flaws.

But the information from Morningstar saying that CET has a 54 basis-point yield just has to be wrong. And if you can't believe Morningstar, well then I guess you just have to do your own work based on primary sources.

I once got the NAV and distribution info on the S&P 500 index mutual fund from Vanguard - they just emailed me a spreadsheet just like Bob's your uncle - and I'm thinking maybe they'll do it again (VTI hasn't been around as long as CET)

Well, thank you. A comparison with VTI would be important, but a worry is that the choice of dates for the analysis might skew it. The longer the interval the less it is affected by base date, but the question remains whether CET does as well on the downside as the up --and whether the interval selected has an equal balance of the two.