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Friday, February 6, 2009

Making Sense Of Your Mutual Fund Returns

By David C Lewis, RFA

Getting good returns on your mutual fund might seem like a joke these days. Many mutual funds have pretty poor performance, and there are a few reasons why. Government regulations have a lot to do with it, and the industry has gotten lazy and inefficient. As a result, investors have suffered with returns that barely beat inflation.

There are a few ways that you can try to boost your fund's returns, but, don't look for these products to be the silver bullet for your retirement that they are pitched as.

The first step in boosting the returns on your mutual funds is by ignoring the 1, 5, and 10 year historicals that are posted by the fund company. Most of the time, these numbers are inflated anyway by showing you the simple average as opposed to the effective yield.

Unless you have a scientific calculator, you're definitely not going to get too far.

An alternative to trying to get more out of mutual funds is to get rid of them. One of the basic rules of investing is to understand what you are investing in. Most people don't understand mutual funds. They don't understand every business that the mutual fund holds. Even most financial advisers don't understand the businesses that the mutual funds they sell holds.

The last "tip" on boosting your mutual fund returns is to choose mutual funds that invest in smaller capitalization companies or choose funds that are relatively small in size. A smaller mutual fund would probably be the essential point here. Small funds have more places that they can invest in. It's also easier for a $10 million fund to double in size than it is for a $100 million.

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