Many investors think that investing in mutual funds is free. What nonsense! Funds collect more than $50 billion a year in fees from investors. That is truly a ton of money. The first way you get hosed in a mutual fund is due to high fees charged. These fees can dramatically reduce your returns over time!
The way that these fees are deducted automatically from a fund’s returns makes them invisible because you never see an invoice or have to write a check. If you invest $10,000.00 in a domestic stock mutual fund with an expense ratio of 2% and a sales load of 3%, and let’s imagine that you get annual returns of 7.5% for twenty years, your money would almost triple to $27,508.00.
The bad news is that you would have lost $14,970 in fees and foregone earnings over the twenty years. Yikes…that really hurts! Why not just bypass the system and buy your own stocks as I teach finance students and home study investors?
These funds are also sold and managed on pure hype, short term trading, and with key information withheld from the public.
All of these factors I teach finance students and investors to avoid! The industry confuses investors by focusing on past performance, which should not be a factor to consider. Many mutual funds are able to cheat the public with excessive fees because investors don’t understand how these big costs destroy their profit. Mutual funds have no interest in educating investors because it is easier to hoodwink the ignorant!
Don’t put your trust in mutual funds unless they are fully indexed. Indexing means that the mutual fund simply uses a computer to buy and sell stocks in the mutual fund portfolio so as to mimic the composition of a major stock market index like the S&P 500. This means that there is no fund manager sucking out needless fees. A good example is the first fully indexed mutual fund called the Vanguard 500 (VFINX) which is also now the largest of its kind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Scott Brown, Ph.D., a.k.a. “The Wallet Doctor”, is a successful futures trader, real estate investor, and stock investor. Dr. Brown holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of South Carolina. His 1998 articles in Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities were prophetic in predicting an impending stock market crash. He has helped many people become profitable investors by teaching them to look out over many years to spot stocks that are low and primed for rise in the new bull market. His second article met with approval by Dr. Bob Shiller of Yale University. Dr. Shiller is the economist that Alan Greenspan most highly regards who coined the term “Irrational Exuberance.” In 1998 he shouted to the world to “get out” of the stock market but now he is shouting to everyone that it is time to “get in!” The Wallet Doctor is not only sought after for investment advice and coaching in stock investing but also in futures trading and real estate investing. Visit Dr. Brown’s site at http://www.BonanzaBase.com or sign up for his investment tips at http://www.WalletDoctor.com
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Article: Invisible Mutual Fund Fees Erode Your Returns! Author: Dr. Scott Brown, Ph.D. Publication Date: 2007-07-27 Total Views: 504 Word Count: 565 Category:Home /
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