Comments on: Making The Case Against Mutual Funds – And Breaking It

By: Dr. Rubini

Dr. Rubini — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:33:21 +0000

i went to a workshop today and the advisor was against mutual funds. i had made a big investment in heebner’s cgm focus fund even with the high turnover. ben stein says my stocks did poorly in 2007 but my mutual funds did okay. my theoryis with stocks you can win big or lose big and with mutua funds that is limited on both side.look at the wsj’s top stocks and see how much they arew down and then take anymutual fund, down less. so in a bad year mutual funds are beter- i think a mixture is best email me if you difer with my comments

By: Jack

Jack — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:38:19 +0000

I had a lot of money tied up in mutual funds and reinvested the dividends. They did very well. As competition between funds became tougher I found that my funds traded a lot and left me with a lot of capital gains. I found that I was writing a huge tax check in April for these gains and didn’t think I was getting a real benefit from them.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:10:29 +0000

Something I haven’t seen emphasized enough is that an index fund–while it may not follow a single stock–certainly follows the market.

And the market is going to dip, spike, correct, go on runs, run out of gas, sputter, dip some more, return, make someone else rich, etc.

Investing in the market is a long-term investment on the bet that the markets in which you are invested will prosper in the long run. Be careful to treat it as such.

By: James

James — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:35:47 +0000

I think a more important thing to note with regards to your “skewed success” comment is that almost all actively-managed funds fail to beat (or match…) the market over long times.

This gives even more weight to the “buy index funds” theory