Monthly Returns, TSE 300 June 1988 - June 1998

10 year return 184.05% Annualised Return 11.00% Assumes dividends reinvested

Fixed-income
These mutual funds include money market funds, mortgage funds, mortgage-bond funds, and bond funds.

Equity-income
These mutual funds include real estate funds, dividend income funds, dividend growth funds, global bond funds, and balanced funds.

Equity-growth
Under this type of mutual fund there are a wide variety of regular common stock funds, as well as global, emerging market, and speciality funds.

The Benefits of Mutual Funds
Mutual funds have many benefits that make them one of the most efficient, cost–effective, and easy investments available. That is true regardless of your circumstances, type of investments you are interested in, or how comfortable you are with financial matters.

Offers Professional, full-time management
Mutual funds are managed by teams of professionals who bring formidable resources to the task of managing money and thus provides a cost-effective way to use the skills of a professional fund manager to develop a diversified investment portfolio. Buying a mutual fund is like hiring your very own investment manager.

Each fund employs a full-time manager who has the latest in analytical tools, communicates regularly with, and visits the corporate management of the companies in which they invest, enjoys ready access to analysts' opinions all over the world and has the capacity to compare potential investments with all the competing opportunities available worldwide. Supported by researchers, they continually sift through the range of investment opportunities that meet their fund’s criteria to select the ones that best meet the stated goals of the fund. They read research reports, analyze financial statements, talk to customers and clients, consider economic data, and evaluate future potential using their experience and insight.

Diversification
One of the principal rules of investing is not to put all your eggs in one basket. By putting your money into a mutual fund, you get instant large–scale diversification. A mutual fund that invests in stocks, for example, may hold anywhere from several dozen to hundreds of companies in its portfolio at any one time. This diversification means that a mutual fund can minimize risk while maximizing returns with respect to its investment objectives.

To achieve this level of diversification on your own, you would have to spend a great deal of time selecting the investments for your portfolio, assuming you even knew how to assess their potential. You would also need to have several thousands of dollars to invest; otherwise the commissions on your purchases would be too costly. Finally, you would have to devote even more time to monitoring and managing your portfolio.

Risk Levels
By distributing the pool of shareholder dollars across dozens of securities, the mutual fund can diversify its holdings. A diversified portfolio reduces risk through balancing both an increase and reduction in market values

Affordability
Investments such as real estate can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Others, such as individual stocks, cost much less, but there are practical limits on just how little you can put into any one specific investment due to the commissions.

By contrast, many mutual funds allow you to invest as little as $1,000 or even $500. And if you sign up for a plan that automatically takes money out of your account and invests it in a mutual fund (often referred to as a "pre–authorized purchase plan"), you may be able to invest as little as $25 a month. And no matter how small your investment, it will get the same high level of attention and expertise that every other dollar in the fund receives.

Thus, there is a type of fund to meet almost every investment objective - each offering different levels of risks, return and income.

That does not mean wealthy investors should ignore mutual funds. The same benefits apply to everyone, whether you have invested $1,000 or $1,000,000.