RetireJapan

Greetings!

I already own a bit of Tawara as part of my bonds allocation, but have been wondering why I never get a notification for dividends or dividends reinvestment. Well it seems to be the case that these very low-cost funds never paid any dividend so far, at least according to the data I can gather:

Nissei:
http://portal.morningstarjp.com/FundDat ... 2013121002

Tawara:
http://portal.morningstarjp.com/FundDat ... 201512180A

Now I can understand that this is the case for Tawara which is pretty new, but Nissei has been around since 2014. Nonetheless Morningstar reports that dividends have always been zero. Is there an explanation for this mystery? It's not as if the fund gained value to make up for that...

From what I understand any gains are added to the assets and not paid out as dividends. This way the gains compound and are only taxed when you sell. If the fund pays out a dividend, it is taxed whether or not you choose to reinvest it.

The fund is unhedged, so the value of the assets also fluctuate with the value of yen.

In Feb 2015, $1=119 yen. The Nissei fund stood at 11,509yen.
In Jan 2018 (before the recent selloff), $1=112 yen. The fund was at 11,375.

So, although the yen value of the fund fell, in dollar terms it actually increased by 5% from $96.7 to $101.56.

It's even worse now that the dollar is at 106!