Behold! The fruits of my epic quest through 12,000 (yep!) mutual funds. If you’re an average investor like I was before embarking on this journey, prepare to gets yo’ financial super-powers on like donkey-kong… or at least learn a few surprising things! (source at the end of the post)
1. Many “international” funds are 20%+ US securities
Turns out many funds with “international” in their names still hold plenty of North American securities (most of which I think I can safely assume are US based). Some fun examples:
- PID PowerShares International Dividend Achievers Portfolio — 46%
- FIVFX Fidelity Advisor International Capital Appreciation Fund — 28%(Northern American stocks)
- MFAIX Morgan Stanley International Advantage Portfolio — 25%
I’d definitely double-check your own funds — you may not be as diversified as you thought.
2. There are 100+ fund families
I counted up to 100, but there are probably more.
- Did you know BoA has their own mutual funds? I discovered 9. Most are money market funds.
- What the heck’s the difference between “Fidelity” and “Fidelity Advisor?”
3. Sooo… “exotic” fund categories are apparently a thing
Large/mid/small cap? Totally. Sectors? Sure. Fixed Multiple Strategy? Uhhh… In all, I found 30 fund categories I’d never heard of before.
- Fixed Multiple Strategy — 213 funds, including iPath US Treasury “Flattener” ETN
- Long/Short Equity Strategy — 47 funds, including SWHEX Schwab Hedged Equity Fund
- Misc Sector — 18 funds, including a water ETF, wind energy index, global infrastructure, and a Uranium + Nuclear fund(?).
- Retirement Income Portfolio — 19 funds. I know about target retirement funds, but had no idea there was a whole category focused on target income strategies. I haven’t yet taken the time to figure out exactly how these work yet.
4. A 1.20% annual expense is considered MEDIUM
That’s right. There are so many funds with high expenses, a 1.20% expense ratio — which should be considered high — instead falls into the mid-20% range. Here are some funds with very high (read: super-duper high) expenses:
- MISEX Midas Magic — 3.31%. Guess his touch ain’t what it used to be.
- AMRGX American Growth Fund Series One — 4.38%
- COPLX Copley Fund — 6.14%
- KED Kanye Anderson Energy Development — 12.40%
What do these funds do, and what could (possibly) justify these fees? I can’t imagine what the market is for these. With this kind of dough to burn, why not get a private money manager, or throw your cash into a hedge fund?
- Source: https://goodbyegunstocks.com My roomate turned me onto this and I’ve gotta say, it’s ballerrr. It helped me browse through thousands of these bad boys — I’ve gone on some Wikipedia benders before, but ohhhh man was this epic.
