Top-Performing Midcap Blend Funds
Posted on May 16, 2008 - Filed Under Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
Midcap blend is that sweet spot in the market between growth and value stocks. A blend fund is a fund that buys enough growth and value stocks to being categorized as either one of those groups. Managers either jump back and forth across the divide as needed or tend to hold a steady array of each kind.
What got my attention is that the MidCap Blend Funds is the second best performing group for both year-to-date and the past five years, according to Morningstar Inc. For the past five years, Midcap Blend Funds returned an average annual 13.51% vs. 10.25% for the S&P 500.
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How To Pick A Mutual Fund Winner
Posted on March 6, 2008 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | 1 Comment
The USA Today had an interesting article recently on how to pick a top performing mutual fund. While there approach differs slightly from mine (I prefer no-load funds, they don’t mind paying a sales charge) I thought that there approach they take when choosing a mutual fund.
Q: What about expenses?
A: Low expenses are one factor that can boost a fund’s future performance. Lower expenses are always better. Funds with small assets may have higher expenses because they’re more expensive to run. That said, we’d be pleased if more of the All-Star funds would lower expenses as their assets rose.
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Building A Growth & Income Investment Potfolio
Posted on February 13, 2008 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
The third in our series of designing a mutual fund portfolio. Previously we have focused on how to put together an aggressive portfolio and a conservative portfolio. Today we focus on how to create a moderate or growth & income portfolio.
Another name for this type of portfolio that combines moderate growth and low-volatility is value. The growth comes from stock mutual funds that offer moderate price appreciation and relatively low-volatility. The income comes from bond mutual funds where long-term returns with less volatility are more important than yield.
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How To Build An Aggressive Investment Portfolio
Posted on January 2, 2008 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
This is part of our continuing series of how to develop an investment portfolio. Previously we have covered Building a mutual fund portfolio and How To Build A Conservative Investment Portfolio. Today we tackle how to build an aggressive mutual fund portfolio.
Typical Investor: This portfolio is designed for growth-oriented mutual fund investors who have long-term investment horizon (more than five years) and who are willing to tolerate market fluctuations while seeking the opportunity for capital growth.
Volatility: High
Return Potential: High
Asset Allocation:
- 75% Stocks
- 15% Fixed Income
- 10% Cash
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How To Build A Conservative Investment Portfolio
Posted on December 18, 2007 - Filed Under Bonds, Investing, Mutual Funds | 1 Comment
This is in first in a series of posts where we will design and build investment portfolio’s based up different risk levels. The first one we will build is a conservative investment portfolio.
Typical Investor: The Conservative Portfolio is designed for income-oriented investors who are willing to accept only modest volatility and who seek only limited exposure to growth.
Portfolio Volatility: Low
Return Potential: Low
Asset Allocation:
- 25% Stocks
- 45% Fixed Income
- 30% Cash
Description: This kind of portfolio is designed to provide the investor with the income they need through the combination of cash and fixed income securities. The portfolio does offer some growth potential through conservative stock funds.
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Building a mutual fund portfolio
Posted on December 9, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | 1 Comment
When building their mutual fund portfolio many new investors make two common mistakes.
The first mistake that investors make is not putting their most aggressive growth funds in their retirement accounts. By law, mutual funds must pass to shareholders at least 98% of dividends and capital gains earned in a year. If you hold your aggressive funds in a tax-deferred account you will not have this tax burden, giving you maximum growth from your investments.
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How to pick a mutual fund
Posted on December 5, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
As an investor looking to buy a mutual fund, your goal should be to buy the mutual fund that will best allow you to reach your goal. With the thousands of mutual funds available today, finding the right one can be a daunting task.
The five filters that are explained below are designed to help you to narrow down the universe of mutual funds to one or two top performers. To give you an example of how these steps work together, I have included an example, at the end of this article, of how I used the filters in conjunction with Yahoo Finance to find a quality high-yield bond mutual fund.
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Lose The Small Funds
Posted on December 5, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
No I don’t mean that you should not invest in small-cap funds. What I mean is that many investors have a habit of collecting funds.
Over time they pick up funds. These could be funds that that maybe they invested in through a previous employer’s 401(k) savings plan that they’ve held onto, or because that fund just seemed like a good idea at the time.
The problem is that a lot of these funds have a small balance, often around $500. Even if that fund averages 12% a year for the next 30 years, you still will only end up with $15,000.
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Buying Into A Bond Fund
Posted on November 15, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Mutual Funds | Leave a Comment
In the first section of this article we looked at the different types of individual bonds and how an investor can purchase them. In this post we will look at how a bond mutual fund works and explain why an investor might choose a bond mutual fund rather than invest in individual bonds.
Bond funds versus individual bonds.
Like stock mutual funds, a bond fund pools money from many investors and uses the money to buy securities that meet the funds stated investment objectives and policies. The decisions to buy and sell individual bonds are made by a professional portfolio manager.
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