High costs, the lack of an age-based option and poor investment choices make these options unappealing on almost every level. |
I don't see it having a big impact. The whole point of mutual funds is to avoid the Wall Street bias and most shops have their own in-house research. Big firms, like a Fidelity, have 200 professionals across the world so they never cared about the Street research to begin with. |
If you thought you were the only one having a hard time finding a good small-cap fund, foreign or domestic, that was still open and not too bloated from assets, think again. |
In general, the more volatile a fund, the more likely it is that investors will be motivated by fear or greed. |
It's a challenging thing to do, and probably can be done a little more tax-efficiently by the mutual fund than by the investor who has fewer holdings. |
It's a good strategy, a good manager, just not a very appealing wrapper. |
Last year people got panicky about corporate debt because of Enron and WorldCom. The spread (between government and corporate bonds) got too big and the market reversed. |
Most active managers are investing in what they think is a sure thing rather than their best speculative ideas. Nobody is out there trying to be a hero right now. |
No one would accuse Lange as a closet indexer. He's done an awesome job at Capital Appreciation. |
Putnam is in the early stages of a restructuring effort aimed at providing better, more reliable performance. It may be years before Putnam funds have a lot of appeal. Stock-picking skill and experience aren't changed overnight. Even if Haldeman and (head of research Josh) Brooks succeed, it will be years before their changes can markedly improve investment results. |
Some of the best performers for the bear market had an awful quarter and some of the worst performers during the bear market had a good quarter. |
The big funds are very well managed and very well diversified. They might fall as hard as the S&P, but there aren't a lot of big disasters there. |
These are funds you can buy and not worry much about. They're well run, and you can depend on that year in and year out. |
This category has performed very well. It's one of the best and most innovative things the fund industry has come up with and partly that's because they do such a crummy job with the rest of their funds on taxes. |
Too many companies had perverse incentive systems that rewarded hot short-term performance and didn't provide any penalties for long-term problems. |