How to Measure Your Funds' Net Asset Value

Your mutual fund's Net Asset Value (NAV) is the total value of a mutual fund's portfolio minus its total debts. The total value of the portfolio is measured by the market value of all the investments in which the mutual fund has shares. The debts are the total cost of running the mutual fund. Your mutual fund will measure your NAV every day, usually at the end of the business day. The NAV tells the mutual fund manager or brokers how much money each share of the fund is worth.

Understand Your Funds Net Asset Value (NAV)

Check out your mutual fund's NAV by finding its name or abbreviation in "The Wall Street Journal" or online.

Find the last day's NAV. It may be from the day before if you are looking at "The Wall Street Journal", or it may be the current day's NAV if you are looking online at the end of the day.

Choose a simple number of shares outstanding. When you are getting started, it doesn't matter what number you choose. This will give you a baseline.

Look at your portfolio and find the amount of your investment.

Find the beginning NAV in your portfolio and subtract it from the most recent day's NAV.

Divide the number you get in step 5 by the beginning NAV number. This will tell you the investment's performance.

Measure Your Mutual Funds Net Asset Value

Select a simple number to represent the number of outstanding shares, like 1000 or 10,000.

Find the closing NAV in "The Wall Street Journal" or online.

Divide the amount of your investment by the closing NAV of the most recent day. This will tell you the number of outstanding shares.

Add the change in value to any dividends. If you withdraw money from your investment, subtract the amount of the withdrawal.

Divide the number you got in step 4 by the cost of your initial investment. This will tell you your total return percentage.

Tips & Warnings

• Your mutual fund will measure your fund's Net Asset Value every day.
• The NAV may be below market price, since it takes into consideration the amount of money paid out in capital gains and dividends. It is not a good way to measure the worth of a fund, since it may show less appreciation than the fund has actually accrued.