Posted: July 15th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
The stock market has been very scary for a while now but especially today. Friday night Indymac failed and the Feds steeped in to take over. I read people where lined up at the bank to take their money out. But here is the thing how far can all the big banks and financials go down? It might be time to start nibbling at some mutual funds or index funds that invest strictly in the financial sector.
This is a very contrarian play but it might be a good long term investment to pick up some mutual funds specialing in financial stocks. When you think about it all the banks can not go to zero or the United States will be a complete mess and no one will have money. The government is going have to step in and save all the banks. So looking at it this way pretty much all financial stocks are looking like great deals for long term investing. Mutual funds work great for this situation since they invest in lots of financial stocks. Some of the Janus funds that only invest in the financial sector might be a good play right now. It would be to risky to invest in individual bank stocks since you never know which ones will fail. But investing in a lot diversify the risk and should give you some nice long term gains.
Posted: July 9th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
So how is everyone’s mutual funds doing in the current stock market. If you are like most people you probably are not doing very good. Over the past year the DOW was a little over 14,000 and closed today at about 11,400. That is a big drop. The credit crisis does not seem to be cleared up yet. But the CEO of JP Morgan was on CNBC today and did seem to calm some fears.
When the markets are getting beat up like they are now its important to be in mutual funds with low fees. This is when its nice to have quality funds that don’t have crazy fees like the best vanguard funds. People seem to forget that they pay fees when their mutual funds go up or down. They are coming out all the time. Nothing hurts more than seeing your fund lose money plus you also get charged a fee even when you are already losing lots of money.
Also when the markets are tanking many people will sell out of their stocks and mutual funds. Now this might be a good idea if you need the funds on a short time frame. But it has been proven time and time again that it is all but impossible to time the markets. Instead of putting a set amount each month into their mutual fund portfolio some people will try to time the market and invest a lot at one time when they think they picked a bottom. But if you look at the chart of the the DOW or any other index how could you ever be certain you picked the bottom. With mutual funds you shouldn’t be trying to trade them like stocks. They are long term investments that you just continually keep stocking money away in. It is tempting to try to pick a bottom or sell your mutual fund at a top and then jump back in if it falls back but take heed from all the past investors who tried this method.
Posted: May 13th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
The best fidelity mutual funds are plentiful. Fidelity is a huge investment company with all kinds of investment products to choose from. Some of the categories you will find the best fidelity mutual funds in are domestic, bond, international, index, sector and many other mutual fund type categories. The reason why you will find many of the best fidelity mutual funds with Fidelity is because they have one of the largest research teams in the industry. Plus they have many highly rated funds by Morningstar.
If your looking for the best fidelity mutual funds you should be checking out the ones that got a four or five star rating from Morningstar. The Fidelity growth discovery fund symbol FDSVX is a five star morning star rating and is a fidelity fund pick. The minimum investment is $2,500 and it has done really well over the last 5 years. The return over the last 5 years has been 11.85% which out performed the Russell 3000 Growth by about 2%. The basic strategy is to invest in above average growth stocks.
The Fidelity International Discovery Fund is another of the best mutual funds fidelity has if your looking to get international diversification. Morning Star rating is 5 stars and the five year average annual return is over 22% which is really amazing. For a well balanced portfolio you want to have some money invested in the best fidelity international mutual funds and the Discovery Funds seems like a good match for that.
Posted: May 11th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
The no load mutual funds vanguard has are really good for investing in. The great thing is Vanguard already has very low cost so buying one of their no load mutual funds Vanguard. These no load mutual funds have nice benefits that go with them. What are some of them? Well in particular the Vanguard no load mutual funds work just like other no load mutual funds. This means you don’t get charged the front end or back end commission that load funds charge. With a no load mutual funds you don’t get any money taken off the top. A lot of people prefer these funds.
If a no load mutual fund and a load mutual fund have the same annual return with the same fee schedule, than the no load mutual fund will out perform. Think of it this way some load funds charge a 3% to 6% commission up front. So if you invest $10,000 in a front end mutual fund then you will only actually be investing $9,400 if you are charged the 6% commission. You are already starting off with a loss. This issue doesn’t happen with the no load mutual funds vanguard has.
Now a lot of times no load funds like the ones vanguard has outperform but sometimes a load fund can be worth it. How can this be? Well if the load fund has good returns every year it can make up for the disadvantage of charging you a commission. If a load mutual fund returns 20% each year and a no load fund such as Vanguards only returns 10% a year you will be better in the long run with the load. But most often then not no load funds which Vanguard has will out perform load ones.
Posted: April 4th, 2008 | Author: | | 1 Comment »
Janus is a well known mutual fund company with some of the best performing funds out there today. Janus has been managing mutual funds for a long while now. There one mutual fund, called the Janus Fund has been around for more than 35 years. Now thats a lot of investing experience. The symbol is JANSX and this mutual fund is a large cap growth fund managed by Johnathan Coleman and Dan Riff.
The Janus Enterprise is a mutual fund that invests in fast growing companies and is one of the best mutual funds. Brian Demain is the current fund manager and he focuses on mid cap companies that are not too small but also not to big that there is no where for them to grow. This fund is also in a lot of different industries. Another popular Janus mutual fund is the Janus Research Fund. This one is pretty interesting since it has over 30 analysts who have lots of experience working on the fund. The main focus here is on growth no matter what size the company is.
The Janus Fund company is all about research. They are known for going overboard when researching companies to buy for their mutual funds. This seems like a great quality to have since you can never do to much research. This only makes sense since they only hire the best. A lot of their mutual fund managers are PHDs, MDs, or MBAs. They come from a cross section of study which helps keep the funds diverse and on the cutting edge. Janus mutual funds seems to have some really good funds out there and it seems like there fees are pretty low.
These mutual funds don’t just invest in straight stocks and equities. Janus has bond funds, money market funds, and asset allocation funds. So if your looking to really diversify, it looks like they got you covered. It seems Janus Mutual Funds are doing pretty good.
Posted: February 5th, 2008 | Author: | | 3 Comments »
One way to get the highest return on your investment is to find the best mutual funds that also have the lowest fees. All mutual funds charge you a small fee for their service of professionally managing your money and also to deal with all the administration fees. This fee can really eat into your profit each year. Think about it this way, if a mutual fund is charging you a 1% managing fee per year; and the fund returns 10% on the year, you only got a 9% return. Now that doesn’t seem like a big deal but that small percentage is hitting you every year; even when the fund goes down. If you can find the best mutual funds that also have the lowest fees you will have a good chance at out performing the markets most year.
Vanguard is a great company that is known for having some of the lowest fees in the industry. Combined with their proven track record, you have a winning combination. Liper did a study and found that on average Vanguard’s fees are just one fourth the cost of other mutual funds. That is a big savings, especially when your savings are compounded every year. If you could get the same or better return and pay a lower fee for it, then you better be going with the mutual fund company that charges the least.
A lot of times low cost is associated with bad quality or bad service. This is not the case with Vanguard mutual funds. Vanguard has been around since the mid 1970s and is now managing over $800 billion in assets. If they didn’t provide quality service and good returns they wouldn’t have been around so long and manage such a large amount of money.
Vanguard is a big name in the mutual fund industry and we will discuss more about them and all their different types of funds in future posts. The main point to take away from this post is that mutual fund fees can really hurt your return. Your goal is to find the best mutual funds that also have very low fees.
Posted: February 5th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
If your interested in buying mutual funds, one of the reasons most people buy them is because they can help diversify your portfolio. What is diversification and why is it good? Well it basically means your investing in many different industries and sectors. Any of the best mutual funds you buy will be spreading their money into small caps, large caps, Internet, industrial, and all kinds of different types of stocks. Having your funds diversified is good since all your eggs are not in one basket. Say you had all your money on line invested in Internet stocks back 2000. You would of lost tons and tons of money. But if you had invested in all kinds of different stock industries the damage to your portfolio would have been less significant.
Generally just buying one of the best mutual funds will help you be diversified but you need to keep in my some funds only invest in certain sectors. While sector funds will be a good way to play a lot of different stocks in say the banking or oil sectors they won’t give you a total diversification of being invested in all the sectors. Some of the best sector mutual funds can perform really good if things are on the up and up in that particular industry but you can really get hurt with them if you don’t buy into more generalized mutual funds to protect yourself.
Buying one of the best mutual funds that invests in all industries and is a great way to protect your self. Think of it this way; usually when one sector or industry is going up another one will be going down. By investing in all of them and being diversified you will be able to ride out the bumps and get a more overall average market return. Plus being invested in some of the best mutual funds will really help too.
Posted: January 30th, 2008 | Author: | | No Comments »
Ok if you want to find the best mutual funds you are going need to understand a few basic principles of how mutual funds works. This post will go over the very basics so if you already have a good understanding how things work I would recommend reading some of the other more involved posts.
What is a mutual fund? To make things easy, think of it as a pool of investors who bring all their money together. This money is then invested in stocks or bonds by professional money managers. Right there is the ultra simple definition of what a mutual fund is. But if you want to find the best mutual funds you have to understand more than that.
Mutual funds allow a small time investor to have their money professionally managed even thought they would never be able to have this happen with just the small amount of money they have. Economy of scale comes into play here; because so many investors combine their money in a mutual fund they get some advantages. It would be pretty tough to find a professional money manager to take the time to invest a little amount like $5,000 but when you combine hundreds of investors they can all benefit.
When you invest in a mutual fund you will buy shares in it just like you would an individual stock. But unlike stocks; they do not trade through out the day. What usually happens is that the NAV which is the net asset value is calculated each day and that is the price that you either buy or share you best mutual fund shares at. There are companies out there who’s main objective is just to figure out what each mutual fund is worth each day. If the stocks or bonds your mutual fund holds, are making money and going up in price than your shares in the best mutual funds will be going up in price as well. Of course if the fund your invested in is not doing good then your shares will be dropping in price as well.
I hope this overview will help you understand the best mutual funds a bit better.
Posted: January 29th, 2008 | Author: | | 1 Comment »
This site is all about mutual funds. Particular attention will be payed to finding and discussing the best mutual funds out there. Now there is a lot of information when it comes to the financial industry and I’ll try turn complex ideas into simple words so you can easily understand it.
Many people invest in mutual funds but they don’t really know much about them. You should be able to learn a thing or two from this site. I’ll try to update it as often as I can, so keep checking back. Also keep in mind, none of the information presented on this site is meant to be a recommendation. Always check with your financial adviser before doing anything.
