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UNDERSTANDING TOTAL RETURN

Want to know whether a mutual fund has gained or lost money over a certain period of time - and how much the gain or loss was? The answer is in a number called the "total return."

Total return is made up of two things:

1.
The change in the price of the shares you own
2.
Money (such as dividends) that the fund earns from its investments and passes along to shareholders.

Let's say you bought 100 shares of the Wise Investor Fund for $10 each. Your shares would have been worth $1,000 all together (100 x $10 = $1,000). If the fund's total return for the next 12 months was 5% (which is also written 0.05), your investment would be worth an additional $50 (0.05 x $1,000 = $50), or $1,050. Of course, in this example, it's assumed that you didn't sell any shares of your original investment.

But returns don't always go up. Sometimes, you can lose money on an investment. What if the total return for Wise Investor Fund was negative 4% (-4%)? Those same 100 shares that were worth $1,000 would decrease in value by $40 (0.04 x $1,000 = $40). This would leave you with $960. Total return can positively or negatively impact your investments.

Once you know a fund's total return, you can compare it with the return for a market index (such as the S&P 500 Index) to see how well the fund did versus a larger group of stocks or other investments.



 
 
Please consider the objectives, risks, charges and expenses of any Columbia fund carefully before investing. Contact your financial advisor for a prospectus, which contains this and other important information about the fund. You should read it carefully before investing.