Mutual funds serve a great need. This much is obvious when one looks at the total assets under management that many of these mutual funds are responsible for turning into profit and distributions. But what a lot of market observers quickly notice is that the most popular funds are those that provide an income with [...]
Often, the most interesting mutual funds we come across are those that fly under the radar. It may seem a little strange then that a strong emerging markets funds could do that; fly under the radar. After all, people who are pulling money from domestic growth funds are dumping their cash into one of two [...]
If you were to sit down and survey the best performing domestic equity funds available on the market, you would notice quite quickly that small and mid cap value funds are right there at the top. In fact, these are probably the best performing mutual funds overall. Unlike the performers ahead of the mid cap [...]
Hailed as one of the best bond fund managers of the current day, Bill Gross at PIMCO is surely a busy bee these days. There are two reasons why this bond fund manager would be so busy. The first is with retail investors running into problems with their individual mutual funds. The trend for retail [...]
Although there is a lot to be said about investing in Index Funds rather than actively managed mutual funds, the decision as to which Index Fund in which you should invest is no easy task. Search for the term Index Funds at Yahoo! Finance and you will get no less than 650 results! This is [...]
Bonds and bond funds have offered a great way for investors to enjoy modest and steady returns with minimal volatility. And according to an article found at Yahoo! Finance it seems a ton of investors have decided to drop out of equity investments and opt into bonds instead. (Coincidentally, we just published a brief article [...]
Over the coming months, mutual fund fees will come under greater scrutiny. Of course, there has already been a tremendous amount of attention devoted to fee structures, how the fund companies are compensated, how the adviser is compensated and so on. But what does this mean for the average investor whose financial planner suggests, say [...]
Nearly a decade ago, David B. Leoper of Wealthcare Capital Management published a well-read paper on asset allocation. In his paper, he argued that diversification alone, which we underline here at the Mutual Fund Site, is not enough to water down the risk attributes of a portfolio. It seemed to me when I first came [...]
The idea that one mutual fund company can be better than another is not a new one. Because so many investors remain on edge after the market “correction” that took place in the last few years, deciding to jump in bed with a small cap fund is even more difficult than normal. And small cap [...]
It is about that time again where the Mutual Fund Site stresses the importance of asset allocation. This has very little to do with the recent market turbulence that has seen volatility (as measured by the VIX) jump to the highest levels of the year and more about how asset allocation accounts for more than [...]
A mutual fund’s expense ratios essentially tell an investor how much money the fund spends in terms of, well, expenses. And when all of us in the rest of the world are so concerned about expenses, how we spend our money, should we not be concerned about the way people who come up with our [...]
It appears that a lot of people who find the Mutual Fund Site are looking for help with investing $10,000. Although we cannot “tell” people how to invest 10,000 dollars, we can certainly help them along in their investment journey, whether through our Free Asset Allocation Model service or our specific fund recommendations like our [...]
When we look at the recent popularity of bank stocks, it is evident that a lot of people will get burned. The recent run up has resulted in higher volatility, which means that just as quickly as things have risen, they will drop. And up until the point that the prices really start to head [...]
As a follow up to our former Contrarian Investment Practices post, we want to take a closer peek at exactly where to invest if these contrarian theories have any merit. Of course, we will look at mutual funds specifically. In a recent article published by Russel Kinnel, the Director of Mutual Fund Research over at [...]
Ask nearly every professional mutual fund manager what they do for a living and their response might surprise you. While normal people like the rest of the world see (many) mutual funds as fine examples of investment strategy, security picking and so on, the professionals who pull the trigger on trades actually see their roles [...]
