tut@sun.uucp (Bill Tuthill) (02/28/86)
The February 24th issue of Business Week contains a pretty bad survey of mutual funds. I wouldn't recommend buying the issue just for the survey. Their list of the 24 "Top Performers" contains fully 15 (count 'em, fifteen) funds that returned an average of under 20% a year over the last ten years. With all the good mutual funds around, you shouldn't have to put up with this kind of lousy performance. Among the low-performers were Vanguard's perennially pathetic Wellesley and Wellington funds (with 10-year averages of 14.1% and 14.6% respectively), and the Federated Stock & Bond fund (with a 14.3% average). Business Week completely missed good long-term performers such as 20th Century Select and Evergreen, and good shorter-term performers such as Century Shares and Quasar. Here is an abbreviated list taken from Business Week of only the mutual funds averaging 20% or better over ten years: 10yr% 3yr% 1yr% load expenses Acorn 23.7 19.7 31.4 none .78% Am. Cap. Comstock 22.4 11.8 21.3 8.5% .58% Am. Cap. Pace 26.8 13.2 22.4 8.5% .62% Fidelity Equity-Income 22.6 21.3 25.0 2.0% .69% Fidelity Magellan 34.2 26.8 42.9 3.0% 1.10% Guardian Park Avenue 21.6 24.4 33.0 8.5% .78% Nicholas 23.9 20.9 29.7 none .90% OTC Securities 24.7 22.4 35.4 8.0% 1.28% Partners 21.5 18.7 29.8 one .93% + 12(b)-1 The American Capital Pace used to be a good fund, but has really fallen off lately. A 1985 return of only 22.5% isn't very stunning. Fidelity's OTC and Overseas funds both did better than 60% in 1985. Lindner, Mutual Shares, Sequoia, Vanguard Windsor and QDSP-I would be on the list, except they are closed to new accounts. Bill Tuthill
ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (03/02/86)
In article <3298@sun.uucp> tut@sun.uucp (Bill Tuthill) writes: > >Among the low-performers were >Vanguard's perennially pathetic Wellesley and Wellington funds >(with 10-year averages of 14.1% and 14.6% respectively) Bear in mind that these are so-called balanced funds, investing in both bonds and stocks. Wellesley invests 65% in bonds and 35% in stocks while Wellington invests 65% in stocks and 35% in bonds. It is unfair to compare them with stock funds since their investment objective (and risk involved) is different. Among balanced funds, these two perform way above average. -- Eduardo Krell UCLA Computer Science Department ekrell@ucla-locus.arpa ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!ekrell
wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (03/12/86)
In article <3298@sun.uucp> tut@sun.uucp (Bill Tuthill) writes: >The February 24th issue of Business Week contains a pretty bad >survey of mutual funds. I wouldn't recommend buying the issue >just for the survey. ... I'm a new subscriber to net.invest, so if I'm rehashing old topics please excuse me. Since you don't like Business Week's survey of mutual funds, is there any survey of the top 20 mutual funds that you would unhesitatingly recommend to someone? Are there any you would recommend with qualifications, and if so what are the qualifications? Thanks. -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly
tjo@gypsy.UUCP (03/13/86)
The Barron's of either two or three weeks ago (Feb 22 or Mar 1) contains a complete list of all mutual funds, ranks them according to 1, 5, and 10 year performance, arranges them by groups, etc, etc. There are also several articles describing strategies for fund investing or speculating. Lots of good information.
ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (03/15/86)
In article <720@rti-sel.UUCP> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes: > >is there >any survey of the top 20 mutual funds that you would unhesitatingly >recommend to someone? The Mutual Funds survey published by Money magazine every fall and the Forbes Mutual Fund directory (also printed in the fall) are two excellent sources of mutual fund performance. The latter is especially good as it includes performance in both UP and DOWN markets for all funds. Every issue of Money magazine has a section on mutual funds, with the top performers in the last month, year, 3 years, and 5 years periods in several categories (growth funds, international funds, sector funds, etc.). They recently expanded that section to also include money market and bond funds, also divided into several categories (corporate bonds, municipal bonds, etc). I think it is a good source of information. -- Eduardo Krell UCLA Computer Science Department ekrell@ucla-locus.arpa ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!ekrell