Why is a mutual fund price different on Yahoo than what is shown on Prudential (where my 401K is)?

The prices on Yahoo (and in newspapers, etc.) are for the public fund. Within your 401(k) you are using a private fund that in turn own shares of the public fund. The numbers are different because:

+ the arbitrary values that the prices staretd at might have been different

+ additional fees are likely being taken out before the private funds value is calculated each day

To know what your 401(k) is worth you have to get taht infor from the company administering your 401(k)

You are probably referring to a mutual fund that can be purchased inside or outside of a 401k retirement plan. The reason that it will have different closing quotes is because they are actually 2 different funds. Mutual funds used in retirement plans generally have a very favorable internal cost structure over funds outside of a retirement plan. Mutual fund shares are able to be purchased a variety of different ways. You're probably familiar with shares that are bought no load or front loaded. Another way that shares can be purchased is as R shares. R stands for retirement. Generally speaking this is the cheapest way for mutual fund shares to be purchased. They typically are no load and they also have extremely low internal expense fees. Because funds in 401k's don't trade very often and because they are usually purchased in very large blocks, the fund company passes this savings back to the investor.

It is often difficult to find the exact closing price of mutual funds inside a 401k bought in R shares. I don't worry about it too much because the funds are invested almost identically so if I see that the non 401k fund is up 10 cents on yahoo, I can be relatively sure that my R shares probably went up somewhere close to that. The best way to get exactly what it closed at is to go to your retirement plan's website. I hope that helped.