Dear Steven,
Thank you for your explanation. I had naively assumed the investment income in the "Support and revenue" section of the financial statements was only for income from investments (i.e. dividend payments etc.), without tracking changes in the value of investments as well. So what you say makes sense.
There is still something odd though. The US stock market dropped in 2019–2020 as well, as a result of Covid. The Dow Jones Index went from about 26,600 at the end of June 2019 to about 25,000 by the end of June 2020, having fallen below 20,000 in the spring. But even so, the WMF had a positive investment income of $5.5 million that year.[1]
The following year, 2020–2021, the stock market rose very substantially, with the DJI going from the said 25,000 to 34,500 by the end of June 2021 – an increase of almost 10,000 points. Yet WMF investment income was $1 million less than the year prior: just $4.4 million.[1]
In the 2021–2022 year, as you say, the stock market went down again, the DJI dropping from the said 34,500 to 31,100 at the end of June 2022. So that drop is indeed twice as large as the drop in 2019–2020, but to go from a $5.5 million gain in a year where the DJI dropped by 1,600 points to a $12 million loss in a year where the DJI dropped by 3,400 points struck me as odd.
And I still don't quite understand why the Q3 tuning session forecast a $26 million surplus,[2] while the actual surplus turned out to be just $8 million. I guess the fact that most of the drop in the markets occurred from April onwards could explain part of it.
Andreas