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Cheap Funds Dupe Investors: 3Q12

Fund holdings affect fund performance more than fees or past performance. A cheap fund is not necessarily a good fund. A fund that has done well in the past is not likely to do well in the future (e.g. 5-star kiss of death). Yet, traditional fund research focuses only on low fees and past performance.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
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Best & Worst Style ETFs & Mutual Funds

This report identifies the “best” ETFs and mutual funds based on the quality of their holdings and their costs as of July 2012. As detailed in “Low-Cost Funds Dupe Investors”, there are few funds that have both good holdings and low costs. While there are lots of cheap funds, there are very few with high-quality holdings.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
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Roadmap to the Best & Worst ETF & Mutual Fund Styles

None of the fund styles earn a rating better than Neutral. See Figure 1 for my rankings on all twelve investment styles. My style ratings are based on the aggregation of my fund ratings for every ETF and mutual fund in each style. Note that the attractive-or-better Predictive ratings do not always correlate with attractive-or-better total annual costs. This fact underscores that (1) low fees can dupe investors and (2) investors should invest only in funds with good stocks and low fees.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
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3Q12 Best & Worst ETFs & Mutual Funds – by Sector – Recap

Each quarter, we provide the most comprehensive review of equity ETFs and mutual funds available. We review the Best & Worst ETFs and Mutual Funds by sector and style. We begin the 3Q12 Sector series with our Sector Roadmap report, which details the best sectors for finding quality ETFs and mutual funds. Next we highlight the ETFs and mutual funds that stand out as the Best & Worst among all the sectors. We follow detaileds review of the Best & Worst for each sector. Look for a similar series of reports for all the Investment Styles next week.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO