<prompt> Human: I have been investing into a Vanguard retirement account Retirement 2050 Fund for about 2 years now. I have slowly watched the performance of this fund decrease. I know that this is a long game and that the markets increase and decrease over time, but when I look at the comparisons on Mint to Dow, NASDAQ and SP, it is way below those exchanges. According to their charts, my fund is showing about 20 less growth than the NASDAQ. Shouldnt this long term fund be somewhat close to these exchanges because at this point in the fund, it is primarily made up of stocks? Should I be concerned? Are these comparisons not valid? Please explain...  <response>: 1. You should not look at the short term performance of your retirement accounts. As long as your asset allocation is appropriate for your age, you cant worry about the short term performance. A 2050 target date fund should have great asset allocation .2. That target date fund is not made of just the SP 500. In addition to that, it is also likely made up of an international index fund, a mid-cap index fund, a bond market index fund, and maybe maybe a small amount of real estate or money market. You would need to go dig around your plan to see what it is actually made up of. And the international market and mid cap market are both negative YTD, which is most likely why you arent seeing your target date fund perform as well as the SP 500.However, this can be interpretted as a good thing. Target date funds are about spreading your risk, meaning if any one of those funds bottoms out, you have the other ones to hopefully offset it. Your fund return is probably somewhere around 1, which means you are not receiving the full brunt of the negative mid cap and international fund return, that are running somewhere around -2. So in a way its doing what its supposed to do - shield you from poor returns by spreading out your money. There will come a year when the SP 500 does poorly and the international fund is the one holding you up, in which case you will be thankful you werent 100 invested in the largest 500 US companies.That risk reduction comes at a cost though - you wont receive 100 of the highs of any of the funds either. But you cant have both. If you want to take a chance at getting a 30 return in a single year, which happened in 2013, you have to be willing to see a 30 loss also, which happened in 2008. And if you want to do that, then you need to sell the target date fund and buy an SP 500 fund.Instead, I would recommend that you just keep putting money in your target date fund and not worry about the return. I think its as good as any option you could choose anyway. 