In doing some end-of-year re-calibration, I noticed something odd about fund returns vs personal rate of returns.  Take the funds I selected for example, the following chart shows YTD performance.

As an example, here is one fund and its performance
 
Fund Name                3 Months YTD     1 Year  3 Year 5 Year 10 Year Life
John Hancock Balanced    6.31%    14.99%  23.94%  8.60%  4.10%  9.51%   6.03%

This table shows my personal rate of return by investing in these funds

 
Fund Name                3 Months (08/01/12- 10/31/12) YTD  (01/01/12- 10/31/12) 1 Year 
John Hancock Balanced    0.96%                         1.03%                     1.04%

What gives with such wide variance between fund performance and personal rate of return in my case?

I've seen this same skewed result for 3 other funds - in the end my PROR is negative and all funds are performing near 10% for the year. 

Why?

Thanks!