Why and How to Buy a Mutual Fund
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The simple answer to the question ‘why should I buy a mutual fund?’ recalls the proverbial joke about the chicken crossing the road. The answer, ‘to get a good return on my investment’, or even more simply ‘to make money’ seems so obvious as to be almost an insult to one’s intelligence. But mutual funds are just one of a variety of potential investment vehicles. Stocks, bonds, and other investments that are available for purchase also offer the potential to make money. So what makes mutual funds the investment of choice for many? When you boil it down, mutual funds provide three major benefits for those who decide to invest in them:
1. Diversification, 2. Expertise, .. and 3. Time
What do each of these mean?
Diversification: In times of high volatility and risk, owning one, two, or even five different stocks, bonds, or whatever security you’d like to invest in can be risky in that there is simply no guarantee that your picks are going to be winners. Mutual funds, on the other hand, offer risk diversification. This means that funds purchase more than a few different investments and the risk of losing significantly in any one investment is minimized by being distributed over a number of investments.
Expertise: You can be fairly certain that professional mutual fund managers have more research, knowledge, connections, and experiences at their disposal than you do. However, expertise and resources don’t always produce stellar results. In fact, only 31% of actively managed stock-based mutual funds outperformed the S&P 500 over the five years ending Dec. 31, 2008. That’s why many investors choose index mutual funds as an alternative to actively managed funds. Index funds simply aim to match the performance of the index that they are following. Since index funds don’t have professionals choosing the investments, their fees tend to be lower than actively managed funds. Whether you choose index or actively managed funds, you are paying for the expertise and convenience offered by those funds.
Time: Without professional resources at your disposal, successful investing can take an extreme amount of time and energy. There is a very high learning curve involved in investing that few have enough time to pick up. If you opt to buy more investments in order to diversify, your time commitment only increases. Opting to put your money into mutual funds frees the time that it takes to research and keep up with each of your individual investments.
How to Purchase a Mutual Fund
If you’ve determined that you want to purchase a mutual fund, here’s how you can do it, step-by-step.
1. Choose a discount brokerage (i.e. Zecco, Scottrade, Etrade, Fidelity, Schwaab, etc.) to purchase your fund through. You could opt to invest in mutual funds through a full service advisor, but there is a wealth of comparative resources available to help you choose your fund for free so that you can purchase through a low fee discount broker instead.
2. Start an investment account through your broker. This could be a a general trading account or a retirement account such as a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA.
3. Research. In an upcoming post, we’ll highlight what you should look for in a mutual fund. For starters, you may want to focus on choosing a fund that consistently has at least met and preferably beat the performance of its peers at a fee that is lower than its peers.
4. Fund your Account: You must send in money via check, wire, or other deposit to your discount broker. Once your account has funds available, you can make your mutual fund purchase.
5. Make your Purchase. Enter a dollar amount that you’d like to apply towards the fund. This differs from entering a price you want to pay as you do when you purchase a stock. The price you will pay for each share will be the closing price on the day that you purchase the fund. The amount you enter will be divided by that share price to determine how many shares of the fund you will receive. When you first purchase a fund, you need to indicate whether you would like your dividends, capital gains, or both reinvested into additional shares. You can change this election at a later time. There is little reason not to choose ‘both’.
Some funds offer no transaction fees when you make a purchase. For those that do charge a fee (typically $25-50) you do not have to pay this fee when you purchase additional shares of the same fund. It’s also worth noting that many funds require a minimum initial purchase that depends on what type of investment account you are using.
6. Add to your Shares Over Time at your Discretion
For more of GE Miller’s writing, visit personal finance blog 20somethingfinance.com.
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12 Comments so far
leave a commentAfter all these years, mutual funds are pretty much the investor staple. They are in everyone’s portfolios or 401k. What’s interesting to note though, is that nowadays, various mutual funds and ETFs that are taking on non-typical strategies. For instance, there are now mutual funds/etf’s that are trying to replicate hedge funds strategies: http://www.marketfolly.com/2009/05/mutual-funds-using-hedge-fund.html
Ultimately though, they are still just mutual funds trying to be something they’re not.
Jay
Probably good to mention some of the negatives as well. From Fool.com (http://bit.ly/JYFqP):
The Things About Mutual Funds That Really Bug Us
* The Wisdom of Professional Management. That’s right, this is not an advantage. The average mutual fund manager provides stock picks no better than the average non-professional, dart board, or stock-picking hamster, as far as we can tell. Annual fees charged by the well-dressed mutual fund manager, however, are significantly more than what it costs to feed a hamster.
* No Control. Unlike picking your own individual stocks, buying a mutual fund puts you in the passenger seat of somebody else’s car.
* Dilution. The downside of diversification. The Mergon Stanlynch 2000 Best Ideas Fund holds so many different stocks that insanely great performance by a fund’s top holdings still won’t make much of a difference in the fund’s total performance.
* Buried and Confusing Costs. Mutual funds specialize in burying their costs.
Word, btw PIMCO, bonds are the bomb. Kudos to AGG (etf), SWNTX. How can you beat 4%+ annual returns?
http://www.indexuniverse.com/publications/journalofindexes/articles/149-may-june-2009/5710-bonds-why-bother.html
And of course, bonds are better than stocks
I will be jumping on the bond/mutual bond wagon as soon as I get some cash.
Great recommendation GE. Let’s continue to stear people towards mutual funds who have very little financial education and put their money in the hands of advisors who take the majority of any gains that are left after all of the diversification. This approach has had done well of the last year or so as mutual funds have inflated the value of companies being publicly traded and have caused millions of baby boomers who don’t have time on their side to panic and pull their investments that have little or nothing left. How many people out there who are wealthy actually invest in mutual funds?
Don’t forget to research any up front loading costs and expense ratios. Over the years, a 1% annual expense ratio will wreak havoc with your long term gains.
This article is crap. Research shows that mutual funds have not outperformed indexed ETF investment. Google it. You’re better managing funds yourself and for less fees.
Stocks are $7 min at a reputable firm like Scottrade. Mutual funds can be a good $0, no?
I guess not now, even if it is tempting. The global economy is not yet recovering good. I will still be watching the trends anyway… thanks for the good article in here.
I agree that mutual funds are a great investment for most people. However, purchasing mutual funds is best done directly through the fund company you have chosen. There are usually no fees for purchasing directly from the mutual fund company. Unlike a brokerage that normally charge what can be quite a substantial fee.
Thanks for the information. I do invest in mutual funds for it gives good returns,will definitely follow the above steps mentioned.
Thanks for the information and important guidelines before buying the mutual fund. Some funds require less fee while some take huge amount. Everyone has to read some article and reviews on internet before buying mutual funds.
This is a good summary but it is important for investors to choose carefully. Many choose a diverse selection of funds without realizing that there is a large overlap in the holdings of the funds that they are invested in which defeats the purpose.
I have worked as a consultant in the research department of a Chicago mutual fund institution and can tell you that the expertise of the portfolio managers is questionable.
Also, with so many mutual funds out there, the research required is not much more than in selecting individual stocks. If investors are not willing to put in the time, just do as John Bogle of Vanguard and Warren Buffett suggest and invest in a low cost index fund. You will sleep much better at night.