How to Pick a Mutual Fund Family on Performance
Stop chasing the latest hot mutual fund and start checking out mutual fund families and their performance records. To begin, you start off looking at Fidelity, Vanguard and T. Rowe Price. These are the three major players in the mutual fund field.
All have been around. Fidelity is the family of funds I am invested in and Vanguard is a bunch of index funds that follow a particular segment of the market and provide passively managed returns at low cost. T.Rowe Price is a lot like Fidelity. All fund families recommended above are no-load funds that do not charge an upfront fee or "Load" to join.
Next start looking at funds that are actively managed vs. looking at passively managed index funds….you are betting on the jockey and not on the horse for performance. Look at their three, five and ten year returns. Look at the growth of $10, 000.00 over a ten year period. And finally, look at their Morningstar or Lipper Ranking and how the fund is rated by these two non-profit organizations.
The outlook for the economy over the next 3-5 years looks good after we get over this final hump of the recession. Now is the time to SLOWLY and PRUDENTLY rearrange your portfolio to take advantage of the next up trend in the market. And don't forget to allocate a small portion of your monies to alternate investments such as futures, stock options and low risk Forex currency accounts. Emerging Markets and International Investments should do well as the over all world economy improves too.
Use any website you like to track your mutual funds: Fund family websites and MarketWatch are the best to research and track fund performance.
With Fidelity, try looking at FLPSX, FCNTX, FDVLX. And also look at Third Avenue Value (TAVFX) as an alternate or addition to FDVLX. I have been in these funds since 2001 and averaged 11.36% annual returns up until late 2007.
Please see my websites: www.make100percent.com and www.thetradersalliance.com .
Steven Kinney is a day trader and internet marketer. See his websites: www.make100percent.com, www.thetradersalliance.com and www.makingmoneyonamazonb2b.com.
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