Mutual Fund Investing

How to Invest in a Mutual Fund

August 19, 2008

You’ve decided to invest in your future. You’ve picked the perfect mutual fund. You’re ready to go. Now what? How do you actually go about buying shares of a mutual fund? The good news is that buying shares of a mutual fund is quick and easy. If you’ve never invested in a mutual fund outside [...]

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7 Myths About S&P 500 Index Funds

August 3, 2008

The S&P 500 Index is arguably the best known and most followed index of publicly traded companies. There are hundreds of S&P 500 index funds and exchange traded funds to chose from if you want an investment that tracks the S&P 500 Index. Since they all track the same index, these mutual funds and ETFs [...]

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Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund (VTWSX)

July 1, 2008

Vanguard recently launched an index mutual fund designed to track the performance of the FTSE All-World Index, a benchmark of approximately 2,900 stocks in 47 countries. With the introduction of Vanguard’s Total World Stock Index Fund (VTWSX), investors can now mimic the world market in a single fund. Much like the convenience of target date [...]

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How to Invest in Mutual Funds You’ll Keep During a Falling Market

June 28, 2008

Selling an investment solely because the market is declining is one of the most costly investing mistakes you can make. To avoid the temptation, here is one factor to consider before buying a mutual fund.

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Retirement Income Investing–Fidelity and Vanguard Options for Baby Boomers

June 24, 2008

Fidelity and Vanguard offer retirement income funds that can produce monthly income and investment growth at the same time. Both are reviewed in this article.

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Do low cost mutual funds outperform high cost mutual funds?

December 18, 2007

A reader recently asked whether the expense ratio of a mutual fund or the fund’s performance was the most important factor when selecting an investment. It’s an important question. What’s the point in investing in a low cost fund if it underperforms higher cost funds? Mutual funds report their performance net of expenses. So if [...]

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Why do mutual funds close to new investors (and 3 funds that have reopened)?

December 17, 2007

Image credit: MobilFunk7The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that three mutual funds previously closed to new investors are reopening to accept new money. I’ll share the three funds with you, but first I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about why mutual funds would ever close to new investors.   The [...]

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WARNING: Converting an Index Fund to an ETF May Increase Your Wealth

September 12, 2007

For the young investor, ETF’s can be a real tease. They tempt you with their low costs and tax efficiency, only to whack you with commissions when you go to buy them. For those making small, monthly investments, the commission costs alone put ETFs out of reach. It turns out, though, that ETFs can be [...]

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Are Mutual Funds for the Poor?

June 15, 2007

The Wealth Report, a WSJ blog written by Robert Frank, recently posted an interesting article entitled How the Rich Invest. The upshot of the article is that the rich don’t invest in mutual funds or ETFs. A survey conducted by Prince & Associates, Inc. found that for those investing more than $20 million, not one [...]

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