In my 401k, I have some shares of "PIMCO Total Return - Institutional" fund. For some reason, once per month, I get a transaction that is categorized as "Dividends/Capital Gains/Interest", but the amount is -(0.02) ... yes, that's negative 2 cents... and the number of shares that I hold decreases by ~0.0017.

Has anyone seen this before? Where are my shares going? How can dividends be negative?

Is this just the "Maintenance Fee"? Since I'm not adding additional money to this fund, are they pulling money down from my balance to cover a maintenance fee? I don't see this on any of my other funds, so I'm not sure what's going on.

 

If the category's "Dividends/Capital Gains/Interest" I'd imagine a negative amount (either -0.02, or (0.02), but not -(0.02); that's positive) is a capital gain, not a dividend nor interest.

 

Interesting. Why would there be a capital gain (or in this case, loss) that affects my share count? Wouldn't a capital gain simply be an increase in value of the share (or fund price) itself? I haven't directed them to sell any shares. And if they did, shouldn't the shares that are sold still have some positive value?

 

If they sell securities there could be a capital gain or loss.

Again, I'm just speculating here.

 

Yeah, you need to go ahead and have a call with someone at this institution.

 

Yeah, I sent a message today and am waiting on a response. Hopefully they'll be able to answer my question satisfactorily, otherwise I'll follow up w/ a phone call.

 

Please let us know what you discover.

 

Will do.

 

So, the official word from the institution is that it's just a correction for the Dividend Reinvestment transaction. Apparently, the original amount that shows up in my account for Dividend Reinvestments is just an estimated amount, so this monthly transaction corrects any amount that they're off.

It's strange that it's almost exactly the same number of shares/value each month, though.

 

And the company is millions richer each year for these "corrections".

I'm just kidding; I'm sure it's perfectly legit.