Over on MSN Money, Timothy Middleton warns the public about seven “bad” (poor-performing, actually) mutual funds. Luckilly, I don’t own any of them. I own various types of broad index funds except for a few more specific funds offered by my 401(k)—I don’t have a choice. Anyway, Middleton has specific advice for holders of these underperforming mutual funds:
- American Funds Washington Mutual A (AWSHX): Buy
- Fidelity Growth & Income (FGRIX): Weak hold
- Templeton Foreign A (TEMFX): Buy
- Putnam Fund For Growth & Income A (PGRWX): Sell
- Janus Fund (JANSX): Hold
- Putnam Voyager A (PVOYX): Weak hold
- Fidelity Asset Manager (FASMX): Buy
As I said above, I believe in index funds. Timothy doesn’t, and is empahtically:
The efficient-markets theory asserts that nobody can beat the market because information is too freely available to give any one participant an advantage over another. That theory is bunk. Much of the information that’s available is dangerous, because it’s incomplete or otherwise flawed. And some investors never do any homework. Thank goodness for an inefficient market. A little knowledge in investing is a powerful thing.
So now that we have knowledge from the MSN Money columnist, we should expect to gain some money in the short term if we follow his advice. I don’t have the money to test him, but perhaps someone does.
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Hmmmm…he lists the seven “worst” but recommends selling only one of them (Putnam Growth & Income).
“Worst” is in terms of recent performance relative to benchmarks. So they’ve beed bad lately, but perhaps not in the future.
I know, but it’s misleading. They present it to the reader as the “worst” mutual fund(s) (implying past and future value) when it should have been presented more along the “poorest performers” line.
It threw me off at first, as well.