Bonds and Dividends

Fixed income investments return most of their value through dividends, not price appreciation. When you evaluate a bond fund using a price chart alone, you're looking at an incomplete picture — one that can make a solid investment look like a poor performer. VizWealth displays total return by default for this reason.

Total Return vs Price Charts for Bonds

When you view a bond fund in VizWealth, the chart reflects total return: price change plus dividends reinvested over time. This is the correct basis for evaluating fixed income performance.

To see the price-only chart instead — the equivalent of what you'd see on Yahoo Finance or a standard brokerage chart — prefix the symbol with a minus sign (e.g., -AGG). This strips out dividend adjustments and shows raw price movement.

The difference is significant. The aggregate bond index, viewed as a price chart, may appear to have dropped around 8% over a given period. The total return chart over that same period tells a different story, because you were receiving dividend payments throughout. A price chart doesn't capture that income.

Price charts systematically understate bond fund returns. For fixed income, where dividends are the primary source of return, relying on price alone leads to flawed comparisons and misleading performance assessments.

Use the total return view as your default when analyzing bonds and bond funds against each other or against other asset classes.

Showing Dividends on the Chart

To overlay dividend payments on the chart, use the Show Dividends option. This adds markers at each distribution date, sized proportionally to the dividend amount. You can see at a glance when distributions were paid and how large they were relative to the fund's history.

This is useful when explaining income history to clients or when comparing distribution frequency and magnitude across funds.

The PIMCO Income Example

PIMCO Income (PIMIX) is a clear illustration of how price charts mislead. If you look at a client statement showing unrealized gain/loss, or pull up a price chart, the fund appears to have gone nowhere since April 2015 — flat or slightly down, with no apparent return.

Switch to the total return view, and the picture changes entirely. When dividends are included, the fund has delivered solid returns over that same period. The price chart creates the false impression that the investment has stalled; the total return chart reflects what the investor actually earned.

When reviewing fixed income holdings with clients, always use total return. Price charts are not the right tool for evaluating bond funds.