Mutual Funds | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Almost $250 Billion Invested in Closet Index Funds in Canada

Posted by Preet on May 24, 2010 | 5 comments

Who would’ve thought that almost 40% of mutual fund assets in Canada were indexed? Definitely not the people selling them since these are all supposedly actively managed funds. (The Investment Funds Institute of Canada reports that as of April 2010, mutual fund assets in Canada are $620.4 billion.) What Is A Closet Index Fund? A closet index fund is a term given to an actively managed fund that looks so similar to the benchmark you’re left wondering why you are paying the higher costs of active management for it. If the fund’s holding looks really similar to the benchmark index, this is a closet index fund. One way of trying to sort through the...

Growing Active ETF Market Means Mutual Funds Should Consider Allowing F-Class Units For Sale Through Discount Brokerages

Posted by Preet on Mar 23, 2010 | 3 comments

This past Monday I had a guest post about how Actively Managed ETFs will signal a threat to the staying power of mutual funds as portfolio stalwarts. In the face of mountains of evidence supporting indexation strategies, actively managed mutual funds with embedded financial advisor compensation have flourished. The author essentially argues that the mutual fund structure is being challenged as now investors can access active managers while bypassing the financial advisor as an intermediary. For more, please make sure to read the guest post here. Today’s post title would be the logical reaction to the “threat” of actively managed ETFs. By allowing the...

TER: The Trading Expense Ratio or Total Expense Ratio?

Posted by Preet on Mar 23, 2010 | 1 comment

By now, most people have heard of the MER (Management Expense Ratio) in mutual funds and ETFs. Another term that gets bandied about is the TER, which is less well known and has a few different meanings depending on which country you are in. Meaning 1: TER = Trading Expense Ratio (Canada) When you look at a Canadian fund’s MRFP (Management’s Report on Fund Performance), it is now required to show the Trading expense ratio of the fund which represents the amount of trading commissions incurred to manage the portfolio as a percentage of the total assets of the fund. For example, if you had a $100 million fund and the trading commissions for the year incurred by...

What is "Diversification"? There is more to it than you might think!

Posted by Preet on Jul 31, 2007 | 0 comments

Diversification basically means not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you hold only one stock and that company went bankrupt, then you would have lost all your money. If you hold two stocks and one company goes bankrupt you have only lost half your money. And so on, and so on. But there is a BIT more to it than just that. If you held two stocks in companies like Sprint and Verizon and someone invents a device that makes phones obsolete, then both companies might go under. In this case you have diversified by holding two companies, but you picked two companies in the same industry! Further, if you held two mutual funds that both invested in large Canadian...

Mutual Funds: Great for portfolios up to $100,000

Posted by Preet on Jul 28, 2007 | 0 comments

I suppose many financial advisors licensed to sell ONLY mutual funds will cringe at this information. First, I want to say that if you have more than $100,000 in your portfolio it does not automatically mean that it is time to get out of mutual funds. But certainly once you pass this threshold you will want to look at alternatives to mutual funds as your options open up (based primarily on the fact that buying in bulk reduces your trading costs). If you remember in my first post on Mutual Funds we defined mutual funds as being the ideal investment for SMALL investors because trying to build your own diversified portfolio would cost too much in trading commissions. So...

What is a Mutual Fund? A basic understanding…

Posted by Preet on Jul 26, 2007 | 0 comments

I suppose this should be one of the first posts seeing as how most people are invested in mutual funds (and have no idea what they are, what the differences are between them, and what kinds of mutual funds there are out there). It is also of note that many investors might be better off getting out of mutual funds at a certain point… but I’ll get into that in another post! A mutual fund is a means for small investors to pool their money together (MUTUALLY) with other small investors so that they may hire a Mutual Fund Manager to take the collective funds and create a diversified investment portfolio that is invested on behalf of all the small investors....