Mutual funds are the best, and easiest, investment a novice or veteran investor makes. A mutual fund is commonly composed of stocks and bonds designed to give diversity and achieve the goals of the company as well as that of the client.

Unfortunately, mutual fund investing is fast becoming unfriendly to the little guys. Lately companies are extensively imposing mutual fund redemption charges, whether you invest on your 401k, small funds, big fund, or even no load funds.

Mutual Fund Expenses

Like any other investment, mutual funds have expenses. The operating costs include commissions your mutual fund is paying when it trades stocks, management fees, overhead costs as well as your brokers commission.

Mutual fund redemption charges are implemented when you decide to sell your mutual fund before the end of the period. Do you know what a time deposit is? Well, a mutual fund is like a time deposit, where in you agree to lend your money to the bank for a specific time in return for a particular interest rate.

If you pre-terminate (meaning you withdraw your money before the stipulated date) then you will be charged a pre-termination fee. The principle is the same for mutual funds, except that the pre-termination fee is called a mutual fund redemption charge. The redemption charge is true for all kinds of mutual funds even the no load funds.

The reason brokers and companies give for imposing mutual fund redemption charge is explained ambiguously at best. The real motive behind the redemption charge is to actually discourage you from selling your mutual fund before the specified date.

The Real Reason Behind It

Actually, the mutual fund redemption charge problem arose when companies permitted hedge funds to cut in and out of the mutual fund. This moving in and out usually just takes days. The dilemma began because most mutual fund companies assert in their prospectuses that they do not tolerate this sort of activity, when in fact they do consent to these actions secretly when the investor is a privileged client.

Due to this moving about of Hedge funds, the SEC has mandated that mutual fund redemption charge be instigated within five days of fund purchase. Sadly, fund administrators are grabbing this chance and making redemption charge as a smoke screen to line their pockets.

Fund executors are now saying that redemption fees are mainly charge for abruptly ending your mutual fund; when the real reason is that managers do not want you to sell their fund because as the mutual fund grows older so does its expenses and the outflow is actually towards the managers wallet for the managing of your funds.

We all know that a sound investment is a step towards financial stability and well being. Most people will tell you that a combination of savings and investment is the key to a secure future. Unfortunately, most Americans do not have the time or the resources to manage a large bond or stock portfolio.

That is why the wisest venture is mutual funds. Mutual funds are designed to give you a diverse mix of securities calculated to achieve varying results. These days is that there are a lot of mutual fund research guides designed to help you make the best decision possible, regardless of your knowledge or level of expertise.

For Beginners

There are over a hundred mutual funds out there, and the possibility is that youre bound to get a headache reading all of them. Not only that, with every single mutual fund company telling you that they are simply the best, you will get confused and end up running away from the idea of investing.

Dont fret; there are a lot of places you can go to, to give you the best mutual fund research guide. The best mutual fund research guide for beginners are those that explain what a mutual fund is, what are the different types of mutual funds are, how they work, what factors should you consider, what are the common pitfalls, the advantages and disadvantages, as well as explaining how to buy and sell your shares.

Some Kinds To Consider

If you go to a mutual fund company, go online and look at these sites. Investopedia.com has a lot of information that can help you. They have articles, and tutorials that really give you an in depth view of how mutual funds work. They give you a lesson on the appeal of mutual funds, the basics and advice on whether mutual funds are right for you or not.

Another mutual fund research guide that you can find online is Troweprice.com. They give you an online step-by-step interactive fund guide. Troweprice.com helps you identify which mutual funds meet your investment capabilities and needs.

The SEC also provides you with a tool for your mutual fund research guide. SEC has a Mutual fund cost calculator, which helps you approximate and evaluate the cost of owning a mutual fund.

Armed with this entire mutual fund research guide, it is now time for you to actually go to a Mutual Fund Company. Go to numerous companies and ask for their prospectus. The prospectus will make you see whether that mutual fund is suited to your investment needs.

Companies are supposed to give you a prospectus which displays the funds objectives; if they fail to give you one, ask for it. If the company does not have prospectuses get out of there. A prospectus is prescribed by law; a mutual fund company that does not have one is definitely fishy

The most important function of any mutual fund returns is for comparison. To determine the best mutual fund is by comparing its return. The return that a fund disperses over a period of time is just the percentage difference between the starting Net Asset Value and the ending Net Asset Value.

The purpose of calculating returns is to make a comparison between different funds or time periods. This is very complex and one must be careful to avoid making a mistake or one could end up investing in the wrong funds.

Absolute Returns

An Absolute Returns measures how much a mutual fund returns has gained over a given period of time. By looking at the share price over a period of time one can determine the percentage difference which will give you the return over this period of time. Be sure to compare the right fund when utilizing this parameter to compare one fund with another.

If you are analyzing the mutual fund returns of a diversified equity fund (one that invests in different companies of various sectors) make sure to compare it with other diversified equity funds. Don’t compare it with a sector fund which invests only in companies of a particular sector and dont compare it with a balanced fund which invests in equity and fixed return instruments.

Benchmark Returns

Benchmark returns compare the earnings of any given fund next to what it should have earned. A Benchmark Return is an index chosen by a fund company in order to serve as a standard for its returns.

In essence, the Benchmark returns are a target whereby any fund is deemed to have done well if it manages to beat the benchmark. Mutual fund returns compared to its benchmark are called its benchmark returns.

Choosing an appropriate time period is the most important factor when measuring or comparing returns. The time period whereby a return should be compared and assessed has to be identical with that fund type it is meant to be invested in. For example, when comparing equity funds you must use three to five year returns although this may not be the case for every other fund.

It is also important to note if a mutual fund returns has a history that is long enough for it to have taken on all kinds of market conditions. The fund manager deserves a pat on the back if a mutual fund returns has succeeded to surpass its benchmark return in the real and dynamic market.

A mutual fund scorecard measures the consistency of top mutual fund performers over time.

Mutual fund scorecard research has found that consistent, top performing funds tend to share similar characteristics. The mutual fund scorecard will specifically target more experienced management teams which can successfully maneuver their funds through unstable markets. Consistent and top performance funds also tend to have lower expense ratios as well as the expense drag on performance.”

One should be quite clear in ones mind about the essential differences between trading and investing, unless you will get quickly confused. In fact, to succeed at either one of them requires being able to distinguish one from the other, especially as investors have long term goals while a trader looks to making money in the near term.

Identify Best Mutual Funds

Once you are sure about whether you wish to indulge in trading or investing, you would obviously want to then identify the best mutual funds. What better way to find a good mutual fund than by using any one of the many mutual fund screeners available on the internet. Essentially, a mutual fund screener will help you identify mutual funds based on the search criteria you enter. Once you have some results, you can then analyze the benefits or drawbacks in investing in such mutual funds.

Morningstar has its own mutual fund screener that you can use. It will require that you input certain information such as Fund Type, Cost and Purchase, Ratings and Risk, as well as Returns and Portfolio. Of course, these are the broad categories that you will need to input after which you will get a results screen that will show you all of the relevant mutual funds that match your criteria the best.

It is also possible to modify the searches, especially after having viewed the results of a previous mutual fund screener search and this is easily achievable by clicking on what is known as Change Criteria, or if you wish to enter an entirely fresh search, you can enter a completely different set of criteria.

In any case, you would need to enter information such as fund group, Morningstar category and manager tenure under Fund Type category. As far as the Cost and Purchase category goes, you need to provide the mutual fund screener with information such as minimum initial purchase, load funds, and an expense ratio. In addition, you may want to specify the Morningstar rating for the mutual fund as well as the risk factor involved.

The Morningstar mutual fund screener also requires that you enter details regarding Returns category such as YTD return rate, one year return, and also 3, 5 and 10 year return rate. Finally, you will also need to input into the Morningstar mutual fund screener information related to the portfolio including turnover, total assets, and average market cap.

Once you have provided all this relevant information to the Morningstar mutual fund screener, you can then click the Show Results tab and sit back and view the results.

Mutual fund stock overlap is the amount of stock, say of Microsoft, owned by all mutual funds in your portfolio. Asset allocation needs to be considered if mutual funds form part of an investors total investment. An easier way to find out what stock each of your mutual funds is investing in is to go through the half-yearly and annual reports. These reports declare all the stocks the mutual funds have invested in.

Fund Overlap

It is possible that even after taking a look at the stocks in your fund, you may have not calculated the amount of mutual fund sock overlap that exists. Chances are that you are holding the stocks of one company in varied forms like value fund, a balanced fund, global fund, growth fund, technology fund. For example, you could have investments in a growth fund and a technology fund of Microsoft. But it could have been technology that has contributed to growth, which means that your stocks in technology just doubled.

Unfortunately, stock overlap is quite common while looking for a diversified portfolio which ends up holding same stocks in one major holding. Most experts feel that it is easy to end up getting stock overlap in large and varied portfolio. However, the goal should be not to have too much mutual fund stock overlap.

For a not to proficient investor, the annual report is a more interesting document than the prospectus given by the fund management. In the annual report you can see what you have invested in. Mutual fund stock overlap is neither good nor bad. Overlap happens as fund managers happen to like certain companies for the obvious reasons.

Thats why blue chip companies are held by numerous funds. The easiest way to avoid overlap is to take a closer look at the holdings in a portfolio, and if there is too much of overlap, take action to reduce it. Knowledge of holdings in a portfolio and the extent of overlap might make all the difference in earning good returns and reducing the losses when the market swings.

If the investor realizes that there is mutual fund stock overlap in the portfolio he/she holds, he/she should realize that they are at a risk of losing. Such investors should look as quickly as they can on an orderly basis to diversify their holdings as the key to successful investing is diversification.

This is the information age. You will find that the amount of data and facts as well as news and even figures that hits you while surfing the Internet will turn out to be nothing short of mind boggling. In order to invest, you need a way to get your information quickly.

Five Digit Code

The mutual fund symbol is the thing with which you can find the right kind of information that will help you invest in the most beneficial manner. Each mutual fund has a five digit mutual fund symbol that must end with the alphabet X. This mutual fund symbol always follows the name of the mutual fund. Thus, an IBM Mutual Fund would have a mutual fund symbol that goes like IBMFX.

Once you learn about a particular mutual fund symbol, it helps in unlocking the whole gamut of data pertaining to investments. If you are looking for mutual fund symbols you can always find it from the main financial search engines including Google, Yahoo and LipperWeb. All that you need to do in order to find relevant information is to enter the mutual fund symbols which will then result in detailed and relevant information becoming available to you.

The results that you get include the mutual fund profile, mutual fund purchase, mutual fund performance and mutual fund risk. Needless to say, with all this information available at your fingertips, you will have a very good chance of pinpointing mutual funds that suit your needs and which may in fact turn out to be the highest earners for you.

The mutual fund profile will include mutual fund address, toll free number, name of manager and tenure, inception date and a whole lot more. The mutual fund purchase information will include minimum initial purchase, maximum 12b1 fee and brokerage availability as well as more.

As far as the mutual fund performance information goes, you get the current net asset value, YTD return, performance versus benchmarks and more. Finally, you will get information pertaining to mutual fund risk including 3 and 5 year Alpha rating as well as 3 and 5 year Beta rating and even total expense ratio.

With all this information, making a wise investment decision should prove to be a lot simpler and it will help you to look forward to a rosy future as far as investing in mutual funds go all thanks to knowing the mutual fund symbols.