I think the "genius" of Wilson funds management business is the consistent dividends of their funds. If you are an investor who only thinks about fully franked yield as the most important thing then their products look great. Add in the fact their performance figures don't include fees or taxes (unlike every other fund) this makes Wilson's funds look significantly better than the performance investors actually receive, returns after fees (dividend + growth) is what actually matters...

As a holder of WMI I would be quite interested to see someone smarter than me comment on the performance and numbers if it was reported in the way each other fund does.

I had a spreadsheet to track actual performance (without reinvestment of dividends due to complexity) from when I owned WMI. Here are some numbers for reference.

NTA:

June 17 = $1.1 (start price)

August 23 = $1.30

Dividends over the period:

49c full franked

70c grossed up

My spreadsheet gives me a compound return including the dividends of 8.3% compared to the ASX XNT of 7.86% (both remove franking credits as tax).

If I put in on a gross basis the $1.30 + 70c and 6.16 year time period into the CAGR calculator I get 10.2% as a gross return. All cases dividends aren't reinvested so a little more performance there.

While I'm not saying the microcap fund has performed poorly, actually does quite well compared to other funds. However, WMI website currently gives a figure of 15.6% compound return before tax and fees since inception, a significant difference to the figures I calculate above as the real return for investors.