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Jewish World Review
Sept. 4, 2007
/ 21 Elul, 5767
Easy matter to rate fund's performance
By
Gail Marks Jarvis
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
> Sometimes you just can't win.
Lately that's been the case for people who own mutual funds that invest in stocks.
If you have the average fund that invests in large U.S. company stocks you probably have lost about 6 percent of the money that was in the fund on July 19.
If you have money in a mutual fund that invests in small company stocks you might have lost about 8 percent.
If you have an international fund, which invests throughout the world, you might have lost 8 percent there too.
And if you are like the 35-year-old paralegal who contacted me from a Las Vegas casino last week, you might be worried that you are gambling with your 401(k) savings and wondering if it's time to dump a losing fund.
During periods like the present, second-guessers hurt themselves. A couple of years ago, Dalbar Inc., a mutual fund consulting firm, looked at how average investors fare with their mutual funds. For 20 years the average fund had climbed about 12 percent -- on average -- per year. Some years stocks are losers; in others they soar. And if you blended the up and down years together the money would have grown an average of about 12 percent a year.
But investors generally didn't do nearly that well. With all their second-guessing, and moving money from one fund to another, Dalbar says, they ended up with about a 4 percent a year gain on average.
So the clear message is to realize that even solid mutual funds will go down when the stock market goes down. But they also go up when the stock market rises. To insulate yourself during risky periods, keep some money in bonds at all times so you are ready for shocks that come on without warning. Bonds tend to be more resilient -- especially safe U.S. Treasuries, or Treasury bond funds. While your stocks have been sinking since July 19 the average Treasury fund has climbed about 2.7 percent. And balanced funds, which invest roughly half in stocks and half in bonds, lost about 3.9 percent, according to Lipper Inc., a firm that tracks mutual fund performance.
A 60-40 stocks-to-bonds mixture is a classic combination -- one to fall back on if you are ever confused about which proportion is wise.
But perhaps you have stock funds and bond funds, and still wonder if your stock fund manager has let you down during the last six weeks. There is an easy way to check. You compare your fund's performance -- or what you made or lost in the fund -- to other funds like it, and to the stock market in general. If you have a large-cap fund that invests in large-company stocks, you compare it to other funds that invest specifically in large caps.
Those funds as a group have fallen about 6 percent, according to Lipper. So if your fund hasn't lost more than 6 percent your manager has done fine. That may surprise you. Most people think fund managers are supposed to navigate away from losses. But if they simply keep you from losing more than others, that's considered OK.
Besides focusing on the present, look at the last three years. That's a more dependable period of time -- a chance for your fund to show its stuff in good and bad times. If your fund has kept up with the average fund like it, that's good. If it has kept up with the overall stock market, that's even better.
How do you know?
Try using Morningstar.com. You can sign up for a free trial. Type in the name of your fund in the "quotes" box at the top left. Then click on the black "performance" bar. Toward the middle of the page, you will see "trailing total returns" and time periods like a month, a year, three years. The numbers you see shows your fund's performance, or what you would have earned in the fund, during a specific time period.
In the second column, if there isn't a minus in front of the number it shows that your fund did better than the Standard & Poor's 500 (an index used roughly to reflect the stock market). If there is a minus your fund was a dud. You don't want to see a minus over three-year and five-year periods. At the far right you can see how the fund did against others like it. If you see a 40, that means it's in the upper half of similar funds.
In the case of a large-cap fund your fund would have done well if it earned more than 11 percent on average each year for the last three years. For small-cap funds your fund will be outstanding if it earned more than 13.4 percent a year for three years.
Be sure to compare your fund to others like it. Each type behaves differently at specific times in the market. So compare a small-cap fund to the average for all small-cap funds.
Also, international funds act differently from U.S. stock funds.
Take a look at your international fund's performance too. An outstanding international fund would have earned more than 22 percent a year for the last three years. But be careful about the conclusions you draw if you see a return much greater than 22 percent. The fund could be heavily exposed to emerging markets. Funds that invested only in emerging markets -- or risky, developing countries -- climbed 35 percent a year over the last three years.
That oversized return should not necessarily comfort you.
Instead, notice that stocks have been falling since mid-July because investors have decided they have been too cavalier about taking risks for the last few years. They are being more cautious now, and risky stocks are falling the hardest. Emerging market mutual funds, for example, have dropped 10 percent over the last six weeks, while the average fund that invests throughout the world has dropped 8 percent.
Rather than holding an individual emerging markets fund now you can obtain exposure through a diversified international fund.
Morningstar analyst Michael Breen recently evaluated international funds that held up comparatively well during downturns in the stock market. Among those he identified: First Eagle Overseas, Thornburg International Value, American Funds EuroPacific Growth, Templeton Growth and Templeton Foreign, and Tweedy Browne Global Value.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Gail Marks Jarvis is a personal finance columnist for the Chicago Tribune and author of "Saving for Retirement without Living Like a Pauper or Winning the Lottery." Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
08/27/07: Mortgage mess could be good for savers
08/17/07: Small stocks are coming with large caveats
© 2007, Chicago Tribune Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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