Amidst its efforts to rebuild its reputation, Toyota Motors Corp. issued a recall on 1.7 million vehicles. This latest recall will most definitely irk Toyota President Akio Toyoda who underlined his company’s goal of repairing Toyota’s reputation as a safe and reliable auto maker at the Detroit Auto Show. This latest recall will most certainly [...]
Information posted on the FDIC website brings the total of bank failures for 2010 to seven. On Friday, January 21, 2010, the FDIC shuttered four additional financial institutions including the Bank of Asheville in Asheville, NC, United Western Bank in Denver, CO, CommunitySouth Bank and Trust in Easley, SC, and Enterprise Banking Company in McDonough, [...]
With General Electric’s (GE) profit up 51%, it stands to reason that yet another feather has been added to the argument that this will be the year that large cap growth mutual funds enjoy tremendous returns. As a staple to many equity funds, GE’s results are more than just about how strong the company itself [...]
Still wondering where to invest? If our top mutual fund pick for 2011 (the Franklin Growth Fund) was not enough to get you started, consider that stocks and the equity funds that buy them remain extremely attractive. One of the most compelling reasons to start investing in equity funds is that investors face a very [...]
A common request we receive at the Mutual Fund Site is one concerning value funds. And realistically, value investment funds offer an added cushion to the potential for long-term capital appreciation; cheap equity prices. Arguably the biggest challenge facing value investors concerns safety of capital, something that is never guaranteed but should at the very [...]
Five days ago, Morningstar published its October monthly fund flows report. Those five days have allowed us to sit back and pat ourselves on the back while we mull over our shortlist of domestic equity funds that are competing for the most-coveted title of “Mutual Fund Site Top Mutual Fund Pick of 2011.” And then [...]
Looking for a strong mutual fund? There is one period that you will take a particular interest in: The three years rolling returns of that mutual fund. When it comes to equity funds, that period is often negative and virtually always unimpressive, and we can thank the 2008 market for that. In some cases, like [...]
Question for mutual fund investors: Is “Average” good enough? Should the really good mutual funds not achieve above average returns? It seems like the answers should come out as obvious. We thought it might be obvious, too, but when looking at the Vanguard Selected Value Investment Fund (VASVX), the answers may not come to easily. [...]
Normally the month of May brings about festivities. For example, the Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico’s victory over French forces in 1862. And this type of celebration happens across Europe as well, with many countries putting on “May Day” parades. For some, however, May is reminiscent of a “flash crash” that cut into the market [...]
Warren Buffett did not make billions investing the way all of the popular kids invested. And so it should be that mutual fund investors should not look for solutions that all of the popular equity funds when they are looking for where to invest their money. In fact, our article about contrarian investing suggest that [...]
No question, small cap funds have been on something of a tear. As the one segment that has actually performed among all equity funds, small cap has seen a lot of action over the past year. In fact, many investors have looked to small caps for protection where large cap funds have been unable to [...]
There is a theory among investors these days that large cap domestic equity funds are not the optimal place to invest. Instead, they prefer some of the more popular investment categories, investing instead in mutual funds with abnormal returns for their categories and which encompass a fairly substantial level of risk. Bond funds come to [...]
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 [...]
Yield. That has a special meaning these days. With tons of mutual fund investors shifting out of domestic equities and moving into bond funds at the worst possible time in history, yield evidently means different things to different people. For some, yield means safety. For others, it means income. But in reality, what yield means [...]
In our recent review of Gold Funds, we realized that with gold reaching new highs and continued central bank instability particularly in Eurozone countries, gold mutual funds had the potential to provide good long-term growth as part of one’s specialized asset class. But gold funds are not the only mutual funds that invest in gold. [...]
