Mutual Funds

Mutual funds are necessary investments for investors both young and old. They provide essential diversification and can strengthen your returns over the long-term. But there are too many funds for any single investor to sift through. Luckily, our analysts give you the inside track on funds with the smallest minimal investments and funds that charge low fees, so you can maximize your performance.

Analyzing Your Bond Fund: What Will Happen When Rates Start to Increase

Bond fund investors have been on a pretty good ride. Using the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund (MUTF: VBMFX) as an indicator of what bond fund investors have earned, the fund reports one and three year total return rates of 7.96% and 7.36% respectively, through the end of the third quarter.

5 Mutual Funds to Play the Small Cap Surge

Here then are five top-performing small cap mutual funds you can buy to take advantage of the small cap surge.

How Mutual Fund Overlap Alters Your Investment Strategy

If you're a typical buy-and-hold mutual fund investor, your investing strategy may have a significant downside -- and we're not just talking about performance.

Traditional Mutual Funds Versus Index Mutual Funds

Traditional mutual funds have come under heavy critical fire lately. This has given them an increasingly bad reputation due to their high fees and costs that eat away at overall returns.

2 Mutual Funds for Safety AND Growth

These mutual funds not only offer the growth potential of stocks for less risk, they've bested the S&P as well.

Beware of High Mutual Fund Expenses and 12b-1 Fees

When the average investor buys $10,000 of Class A shares in a load mutual fund, how much of that money actually gets invested in the market?

Does Mutual Fund Revenue Sharing Create Conflicts of Interest?

Selling mutual funds is a complicated business. Every day, financial advisers can choose from about 8,000 publicly available mutual funds in a variety of share classes to select ones that best match investors’ needs.

Follow the Fund Flows Into Precious Metals

Inflows to precious metals mutual funds are soaring with along with precious metals and gold prices.

Vanguard Lowers the Bar on Admirals

Vanguard has slashed the minimums on most of its Admiral shares from the old $100,000 level for first-time buyers to anywhere from $10,000 for index funds to $50,000 for actively managed funds. In the past, established Vanguard investors who'd held a fund for 10 years with a balance of $50,000 or more were allowed to convert to Admiral shares, but this move obviously opens up access to a far greater number of investors.

5 Mutual Funds from 5 Hot Sectors

These five sectors have many different mutual funds tied to their respective fortunes, and investors have a variety of ways to take advantage of the trend higher in each sector.

Top Mutual Fund Performers For Q3

The best funds in fund performance for the third quarter focused on precious metals and Latin America, as ranked by third-quarter return.

Top 5 Vanguard Mutual Funds of the Third Quarter

While lists of the "best funds to buy now" remain strong sellers on the newsstand, these "best of" lists aren't exactly the best way to go about building a Vanguard fund portfolio.

5 Faltering Mutual Funds to Buy Now

These five mutual funds have low Morningstar rankings but each could be on the brink of a breakout.

Mutual Fund Investors Prefer Bonds

Mutual fund investors continued heavy buying in bond funds in July while stock funds again posted net outflows.

5 Gold Mutual Funds to Play the Bullion Boom

These gold mutual funds that can put sparkle in your portfolio if gold continues to shine.

Global Growth Mutual Funds – Two Picks to Buy

From December 1999 through December 2009, while Vanguard 500 Index (MUTF: VFINX) lost a total of 9.8%, Vanguard Total International Stock Index (MUTF: VGTSX) gained 25.3%, and Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index (MUTF: VEIEX) was up 155.3%! How can we not consider investing overseas?

Top Emerging Markets Stock Mutual Funds

With the United States and other developed countries teetering on the brink of a double-dip recession, one place IRA investors and others can find growth is in emerging markets mutual funds.

3 Mutual Fund Warning Signs

There’s around $10.5 trillion invested in mutual funds, according to the Investment Company Institute and tragically, many investors own funds with undesirable characteristics. What are these mutual fund warning signs?

Bond Yield Investing – Funds That Are Worry Free

Bond yields are now spectacularly low, thanks to the double-dip recession scare that has gripped Wall Street over the summer. One of my favorite indicators, the deviation between the ten-year Treasury yield and its 52-week moving average, fell to -25% on August 19th.