Why Invest in a Mutual Fund?
A mutual fund provides investors access to a diversified portfolio of investments.
Your money is pooled with other like-minded investors, and is invested on your behalf by qualified investment professionals.
Mutual fund investing provides many benefits:
Convenience
Mutual funds take the guesswork out of investing. They allow you to purchase a well-researched portfolio of investments that are monitored on a continual basis.
Affordability
A mutual fund account can be opened, through your Financial Advisor, with a relatively small amount of money. Most fund companies either have a low or no minimum initial purchase amount make getting started easier. Also, you can arrange to make low pre-authorized monthly payments to your account so you can keep investing.
Access to your money
Your investment is not locked in. You can easily sell mutual fund units on any business day – in virtually any amount – and have access to your funds within days.
Professional management
Mutual funds give you access to professional money management previously available only to the very wealthy or to large institutions. These managers and their research analysts are specifically trained to evaluate investment opportunities based on the potential to make money while controlling for risk. They have better access to information than most individual investors and can execute trades at much lower costs.
Diversification
The typical mutual fund holds a wider range of investments than you could realistically buy on your own. This ability to diversify your investments generally lowers the overall risk of your portfolio.
Access to markets
Mutual funds provide access to markets that are virtually unavailable to the individual investor. For example, China is touted as a great long-term investment prospect, but how would you research Chinese companies and purchase their shares? The portfolio managers of mutual funds can invest in countries all over the world, in many cases enabling them to buy securities not otherwise available to the average investor.
Learn more about how Mutual Funds work.
