The Investment Scientist

Posts Tagged ‘mutual funds

images-42It is exceedingly difficult for mutual funds to beat market indexes. For the past decade, Standard and Poor’s has methodologically documented returns by mutual funds and what they found is something those fund managers do not want you to know: the majority of mutual funds under-performed their respective indexes literally every single time.

Here is an infographic published by MoneySense, a Canadian financial magazine, that shows 90% of Canadian money managers under-performed the market index in 2012; I can assure you that US money managers are doing no better.

                                      FundManagers

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Last weekend, I went to New Jersey to meet a potential client who is an executive at a pharmaceutical company.

He told me that, as part of the executive benefit package, the company refers executives to Morgan Stanley where they get “free” financial advice. I smirked and said: “Well, we will find out how free it is. One thing I know, though, Wall Street firms are not known for charity.”

It turns out that Morgan Stanley advised him to open several, separately managed accounts (SMA), each with a management fee of 1.5%. The reason for the multiple accounts?

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Author

Michael Zhuang is principal of MZ Capital, a fee-only independent advisory firm based in Washington, DC.

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