miller@rochester.UUCP (Brad Miller) (09/27/85)
one thing to remember when trying to pick a mutual fund: Mutual fund shares are shares of a much larger portfolio of common stocks. If the underlying stocks do well, so does the mutual fund. Consistently poor performance by a fund is usually indicative of bad management, but TEMPORARY poor performance (say in a quarter or even a year) can be considered a buying opportunity: the manager may be taking positions in stocks that are currently underperforming the market, but he expects to out- perform the market in the longer term. Buying mutual funds based on who has the best quarterly gain is something like buying the stock with the largest quarterly increase: you are probably buying at a peak. Brad Miller -- miller@rochester.arpa miller!rochester University of Rochester CS Dept. Lab Manager