oh, yes, I didn’t take notice of the dividends.

From the bottom of the page where you get the monthly data, there is a chart for comparing the LS fund with several benchmarks. Below the chart says : “Figures include reinvestment of dividends and capital gains… ” I wonder if it means the benchmarks also reinvest the dividends.

May be folks at Diehards.org or Vanguard can help to answer this? I have emailed Vanguard this question. By the way, I think a quarterly results is enough for me.. lazy to track monthly –>

Does the benchmark include re-invested dividends? I chose the fund version because it is very easy for me to look up the total returns (CG + Dividends) from the Vanguard website. In addition, I can check the returns monthly.

Just a thought… You can use the benchmark of the LifeStrategy Funds as your benchmark. Their stock-bond ratio is fixed and not variable as the Fund itself. But only Year-End Average return is available, e.g. The benchmark return for LifeStrategy Growth Fund (80/20) is http://tinyurl.com/zmx2v . Its benchmark is 65% MSCI US Broad Market Index, 20% Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, and 15% MSCI EAFE Index. Very heavy in US.

I may just use both the fund and its benchmark as my benchmark.

My portfolio allocation is 70/30 (70% equity, 30% fixed income). I wanted a benchmark whose performance can be computed easily and also has a broad diversification over the whole market. I think Vanguard’s LifeStrategy funds would be appropriate.

However, there is no LifeStrategy fund that has a target of 70/30. So I used a 50:50 spliced version of the following two funds:

Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund (target 60/40, currently 70/30)
Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund (target 80/20, currently 90/10)

A combination of these two funds have a target of 70/30 (although their allocation is currently closer to 80/20). I also mentioned these two funds in the “Portfolio return for March 2006″ post.

What benchmark do you use? How to construct the benchmark? Any online resource?

Thanks.