Quotes & Sayings About Mutual Funds

The thing to do with mutual funds is to buy a couple of decent ones, set up an investment plan and then never, ever think about them again, except maybe once a quarter or so when you take a peek at your statements to make sure that you have not accidentally been buying the Fidelity Peace-in-the-Middle-East fund. — Alex Berenson

Brokerage firms don't sell customers stock so much as they sell those horrible mutual funds — Michael Steinhardt

There is no reason to feel any shame in hiring someone to pick stocks or mutual funds for you. But there's one responsibility that you must never delegate. You, and no one but you, must investigate whether an adviser is trustworthy and charges reasonable fees. — Benjamin Graham

I just don't like mutual funds. I think they're a rip-off. — Robert Kiyosaki

Mutual funds were created to make investing easy, so consumers wouldn't have to be burdened with picking individual stocks. — Scott Cook

I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results. — Kenneth Fisher

I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons. — Ron Chernow

Mutual funds charge 2% per year and then brokers switch people between funds, costing another 3-4 percentage points. The poor guy in the general public is getting a terrible product from the professionals. I think it's disgusting. It's much better to be part of a system that delivers value to the people who buy the product. But if it makes money, we tend to do it in this country. — Charlie Munger

Mutual funds dare to be average. In fact, they dare to be lousy. They have long since ceased striving for anything resembling perfection when it comes to managing your money. — Gary Weiss

There are tons of people who are late to trends by nature and adopt a trend after it's no longer in fashion. They exist in mutual funds. They exist in clothes. They exist in cars. They exist in lifestyles. — Jim Cramer

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market. — Ron Chernow

When you diversify your mutual funds, you are diversifying something that is already diversified. Diversifying mutual funds is like taking high octane gasoline & adding water & then adding orange juice to it. — Robert Kiyosaki

Maybe you'll take the cash out. So a credit card company or a bank that goes into the business of saying we're going to be the broker, we're going to sell you a mortgage that you're going to be able to pay off, we're going to help you reduce your credit card debt, we're going to help you save for retirement, we're going to put you into mutual funds that have low fees rather than high fees. — Richard Thaler

During my undergraduate training at UCLA, I was studying finance and securities; my particular interest was with mutual funds. Wanting to get into a high position at some of the companies that were doing that, I knew that law would be useful. — Robert Shapiro

Many novice real estate investors soon quit the profession and invest in a well-diversified portfolio of bonds. That's because, when you invest in real estate, you often see a side of humanity that stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and saving money shelter you from. — Robert Kiyosaki

The most popular investing products are the worst ones for investors. — Robert Rolih

One of the problems with a 529 plan is that you must give up an element of control. The best 529 plans available, and my second choice to an ESA, is a "flexible" plan. This type of plan allows you to move your investment around periodically within a certain family of funds. A family of funds is a brand name of mutual fund. You could pick from virtually any mutual fund in the American Funds Group or Vanguard or Fidelity. You are stuck in one brand, but you can choose the type of fund, the amount in each, and move it around if you want. This is the only type of 529 I recommend. — Dave Ramsey

[A] major source of wealth for many families is financial assets, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and private pensions ... the wealthiest 5 percent of households held nearly two-thirds of all such assets in 2013 — Janet Yellen

The best argument for mutual funds is that they offer safety and diversification. But they don't necessarily offer safety and diversification. — Ron Chernow

If you don't like the idea that most of the money spent on lottery tickets supports government programs, you should know that most of the earnings from mutual funds support investment advisors' and mutual fund managers' retirement. — Robert Kiyosaki

In general, the hedge funds were clobbered by the 1969 bear market, ending up in many cases with records that were worse than those put together by aggressive mutual funds denied the luxury of short sales. — Carol Loomis

To make the most of your money, I recommend sticking with mutual funds that don't charge a commission when you buy or sell. — Suze Orman

If you hope to have more money tomorrow than you have today, you've got to put a chunk of your assets into stocks. Sooner or later, a portfolio of stocks or stock mutual funds will turn out to be a lot more valuable than a portfolio of bonds or CDs or money-market funds. — Peter Lynch

Invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds ... and stay away from profit-driven investment management organizations ... The mutual fund industry is a colossal failure ... resulting from its systematic exploitation of individual investors ... as funds extract enormous sums from investors in exchange for providing a shocking disservice ... Excessive management fees take their toll, and manager profits dominate fiduciary responsibility. — David F. Swensen

What I find very interesting about the mutual funds managers is that here are people who are the new masters of the universe. They're managing billions, yet they're subject to this quiet daily tyranny of numbers. — Ron Chernow

And I think the more money you put in people's hands, the more they will spend. And if they don't spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that. — Michael Bloomberg

Affected hundreds of thousands of ordinary Canadians who have invested in mutual funds that invest in income trusts. — Ralph Goodale

If you ask me, over time, I am a believer in the Indian financial saving story getting stronger; a lot more savers are moving money away from gold and real estate into banks, mutual funds, insurance and equities. — Uday Kotak

The general systems of money management today require people to pretend to do something they can't do and like something they don't. It's a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That's the way it has to work. Mutual funds charge two percent per year and then brokers switch people between funds, costing another three to four percentage points. The poor guy in the general public is getting a terrible product from the professionals. — John C. Bogle

Failure to use tax money to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called 'censorship.' If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose whether to buy apples instead of oranges, vacations rather than violins, furniture rather than mutual funds. But of course no such consistency is intended. This strained use of the word 'censorship' appears only selectively, to describe public choices and values at variance with the choices and values of the anointed. — Thomas Sowell

Move your personal investments and retirement funds to socially responsible investment (SRI) funds that support only those corporations that uphold higher standards of behavior. Returns on SRI funds are usually equal to, if not better than, many of the well-known traditional mutual funds. — Simon Mainwaring

Most of the mutual fund investments I have are index funds, approximately 75%. — Charles R. Schwab

The corporate killer downsizing is directly responsive to what the mutual funds have wanted. — Jim Cramer

Driving back to Portland I'd puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I'd been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I'd despised it to boot. I'd been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I'd felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn't selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes — Phil Knight

Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren't actually earned by mutual fund investors. — John C. Bogle

In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress. — Peter Lynch

I suggest a Money Market account with no penalties and full check-writing privileges for your emergency fund. We have a large emergency fund for our household in a mutual-fund company Money Market account. Wherever you get your mutual funds, look at the website to find Money Market accounts that pay interest equal to one-year CDs. I haven't found bank Money Market accounts to be competitive. The FDIC does not insure the mutual-fund Money Market accounts, but I keep mine there anyway because I've never known one to fail. Keep in mind that the interest earned is not the main thing. The main thing is that the money is available to cover emergencies. Your wealth building is not going to happen in this account; that will come later, in other places. This account is more like insurance against rainy days than it is investing. — Dave Ramsey

Institutions like mutual funds often worry that if they disclose their plans to buy a stock, copycats will move quickly and drive up the stock before the purchase is completed. — Alex Berenson

Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks. — Ron Chernow

The role of the hero was filled, surprisingly, by the most frightening of untested forces in the market - the mutual funds. — John Brooks

I think you'll do as well as most professionals. Most professionals don't beat the market. Let's not over-rate my industry. But if you have time, you can be in good mutual funds that have good records. — Jim Cramer

Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors. — Joel Spolsky

Wall Street, with its army of brokers, analysts, and advisers funneling trillions of dollars into mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity funds, is an elaborate fraud. — Michael Lewis

Millions of mutual-fund investors sleep well at night, serene in the belief that superior outcomes result from pooling funds with like-minded investors and engaging high-quality investment managers to provide professional insight. The conventional wisdom ends up hopelessly unwise, as evidence shows an overwhelming rate of failure by mutual funds to deliver on promises. — David F. Swensen

Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance. — Richard Thaler

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny should take a few pointers from the mutual-fund industry. All three are trying to pull off elaborate hoaxes. But while Santa and the bunny suffer the derision of eight year olds everywhere, actively-managed stock funds still have an ardent following among otherwise clear-thinking adults. This continued loyalty amazes me. Reams of statistics prove that most of the fund industry's stock pickers fail to beat the market. — Jonathan Clements

There were two qualities about the mutual funds of the 1920s that made them extremely speculative. One was that they were heavily leveraged. Two, mutual funds were allowed to invest in other mutual funds. — Ron Chernow

Trust the Canadians to produce a game about mutual funds that is actually more boring than the real thing. — Alex Berenson

9Among the many lessons that merge from the geologic record, perhaps the most sobering is that in life, as in mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Mutual funds are an overrated investment heavily promoted by Wall Street. — Peter Schiff

Most active mutual funds are more interested in collecting fees than in boosting returns for investors. — David F. Swensen

Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management. — Barry Ritholtz