Why Trade, if you can buy mutual funds?

No load funds still charge management fees, 12b-1 fees, and other fee expenses. There is no such thing as a no fee mutual fund. they may not charge a sales fee (load), but there is always other fees.
 
Quote from risktaker:

Just don't expect to change any minds around here. People here have the sense that "I'm better than the average joe shmoe" and I can trade better too.

So, if you're into mutual funds, this site won't really be of much use to you.

what make newbies with their limited experiance and small brian, think they can outperform managers who have been at these for at least 10-15 years?

well, I don't think that way:confused:
 
Many reasons.
1. Limited ways of making money in other venues.
2. Constantly bombarded by "easy money trading" commercials.
3. Many here *are* successful in other careers/ventures and believe they can duplicate that success in trading and do even better than the "mediocre" 90% of "traders" out there.
4. Most people believe that if they just try hard enough they will succeed. This applies to their thinking in the trading arena.
Many other reasons too numerable to list.

Quote from OptionScreen:

what make newbies with their limited experiance and small brian, think they can outperform managers who have been at these for at least 10-15 years?

well, I don't think that way:confused:
 
Quote from rarhoads:

Point number 1 - 60% of mutual funds make money over 3-5 years.

I don't know what database you were using, but if it's a list of current mutual funds you probably have a survivor bias in there. I'm sure some funds have gone out of business due to lack of performance in the past 5 years due to underperformance, that would definitely take your % of winners down some.

Also, there are a handful of mutual funds that short. I use to work for one.

I found 60% funds that has been profitable in the past 5years are profitable today also

I found at least 5256 mutual fund in positive teritory this year
out of 17,000 out there (most less know, smaller sized funds,.. lost money)
 
For same time I worked in sales for a top Wall Street firm. Some of the things that bothered me the most about my job were the constant lunches, dinners, baseball tickets and special gifts such as escorts we received from the people of the Mutual Fund business.

When you receive those presents is nice, but when you are a customer and you pay high commissions for supposed good management it sucks. Even worse when you consider that most managers can't beat the darts thrown at the Wall Street Journal.
 
Quote from OptionScreen:


I need the answer, "SELF MANAGED" vs "MUTUAL FUND"
Which i better if you had to select one only?

Why do I have to pick ONE?
I do both, and make money both ways.

A CTA or fund manager may trade the exact same holdings as I do and be on the opposite side of my trades.

He may hold for months while I hold for hours/days.
I guess you are not cutting it as a trader and do not want to admit failure!
 
Regarding the 60% of profitable funds -

Did your database start with funds in existence 5 years ago or just include ones that are around today?
 
Quote from Ebo:

I guess you are not cutting it as a trader and do not want to admit failure!

There are terms called concentration risks + opportunity risks in every business you do.

Please lets not get into personal issues, keep this theard
on topic, for me and other incase need to know more, thank you
 
Quote from rarhoads:

Regarding the 60% of profitable funds -

Did your database start with funds in existence 5 years ago or just include ones that are around today?

I just searched for funds that where in positive teritory
both 1year and last 5 years combined, it retured nearly
3200+ funds

You can do this with fidility, Etrade, ameritrade,...search
criterias
 
Isn't this in the book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street"? Am I wrong? Its in some book. But anyways, they studied MFs and found that on the whole, they averaged out to perform with the market. When you figure in the fees they take out, your money would underperform the market so you'd be better off buying an index. They found that yes some outperform the market for several years but the averages weren't any different than if you just kept flipping coins for every mutual fund every year. In the end there were a few star managers after 10 years but by that point that they were statistically significant, they'd done so well their fees went way way up to reduce the desirability of the fund.
 
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