Lux Investing
Mutual Funds / Investing Question, Please Assist?
I have a range of money market accounts, Savings accounts, Bonds, etc... looking now to begin in the area of mutual funds. I'm looking a good, fully serviced, mutual fund that will be geared toward aggressive growth, with a minimun initial investment of about $1,000. Morningstar **** or ***** would be preferred. Looking help to find specific funds, not just companies that offer them. Any success stories welcome, any warnings/advice to what not to do is apprieciated as well. Thank you for your help, please answer sincerely. haha, by the lack of answers ill just assume im asking for to many specifics... if you know of ANY specific good mutual funds or want to share bad ones id appreiciate it. additionally, being new to the mutual fund market, when i see 1,5,10 year %'s of growth, is that referencing the average yearly return for that period of time?
Public Comments
- Most of the major money/finance magazines every few months publish a list of best performing mutual funds in different catagories (Growth, small-cap, international, value, and 'sector' funds: healthcare, banks, precious metals, etc). They usually show one year, three year, five year and ten year performance history and the minimum initial investment for mutual funds, as well as whether it is a 'load' or no load. Of course past performance is not a guaranteed predictor of future performance, as their brochures state, but it is certainly a good starting place. If you can set up automatic (from a checking or bank account) monthly withdrawals into the mutual fund, you will see the value of the fund climb. Morningstar of course is a very good source of mutual fund information - and you can generally find it for free at the public library zeke
- Without doing a complete risk profile on you, it's hard to recommend a specific fund. If you're new to mutual fund investing, stick with some of the bigger name companies to start. I personally like Fidelity's Mid Cap fund. It's not too aggressive and is highly rated by Morningstar. For something a little more conservative, try one of their Freedom Funds. It starts off aggressive and the mix automatically gets more conservative as it gets closer to the time you want the money. My best advice I could give you is to contact a financial professional. It's always best to get professional advice and guidance.
- I like Legg Mason Partners Funds (formerly called Smith Barney). I invest in LMP Aggressive Growth, LMP Fundamental Value, and LMP Appreciation Fund. These are known as "3 Fund Approach." Why? Just like you don't want to invest all your money into one stock, you don't want to invest your money all in one mutual fund (even though it invests 25 to 300 different companies). How you want to diversify your money is up to you, but I put about 33% into all. My dealer is PFS Investments and they don't charge any fees to use their services. You can buy or redeem your shares online. You can check the value of your portfolio anytime online too. Oh yeah, make sure the agent is properly licensed and ask about the complimentary financial need analysis (a very useful financial tool). Anyway, no matter how you invest, don't pull out if the stock market crashes because you know stock market will always rebound (base on past performance).
- I have had very good luck with the Legg Mason Value Fund (LMVTX) It is the only fund that has outperformed the S&P 500 for fifteen consecutive years. Their expense ratio is 1.6%, just a bit higher than some funds (like S&P index funds) but even so, Bill Miller, the manager has done a fantastic job with this fund. The top five holdings are: Sprint Nextel, United Healthcare, Amazon, Tyco Int'l and Google and I believe the minimum investment is $1,000. Sam Wymer
- This is something you'll have to decide for yourself. MorningStar & TD Ameritrade are two sites from which you can get some very decent information. I have been considering adding some mutual funds to my portfolio, like Fidelity and/or Oppenheimer. But, basically, I feel more comfortable dealing with stocks; but to balance out my portfolio I will have to buy some funds and bonds, eventually.
