Thursday, November 13, 1997

Mutual Fund "Opportunities"
by [email protected] ([email protected])

Owning a mutual fund affords you the opportunity to read indecipherable legalese in prospectuses written to make sure you don't understand too much of what is going on.

Owning a mutual fund gives you a chance to help the poor fund manager buy his or her own yacht with the management and advertising fees you pay each year.

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity to give the IRS capital gains taxes each year, even if you don't sell any shares.

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity not to know exactly at any given moment what you own.

Owning a (load) mutual fund gives you the opportunity to hand over 1-5% (or more!) of your investment money right off the bat!

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity to be in the dark about the price the fund manager paid for a particular stock in the portfolio.

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity not to know when a stock was purchased. Some funds like to buy "winners" just before the quarter ends. This means that the fund gets to look like it enjoyed the profits that made the stock "winner."

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity to have someone manage your money. For a fee. This person may still have pimples and has not yet attended a prom or even voted during the last bear market. This person may even still be on a baby-sitter's holiday card list. This person gets paid regardless of the performance of the fund.

Owning a mutual fund gives you the opportunity to trust that the person who gave your mutual fund its glorious track record is still there. Sometimes the funds tell you of personnel changes. Sometimes they don't. At least not in time.

Owning a mutual fund gives you the recurring annual pleasure of knowing that you are paying fund management fees without knowing exactly how much those fees are or what your portion of those fees is. Just how do they figure that 1%? And why don't they specify it in the statements?

What an opportunity, huh?

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