new forex

But, wait a minute. Isn't the whole purpose of mutual funds to coax us lowly investors into enlisting the help of professionals who can achieve superior returns? That's the idea the mutual fund industry has been trying to sell us for many years. The truth is that a majority of mutual funds fail to outperform the S&P 500. The exact stats vary depending on the year, but on average, anywhere from 50%-80% of funds get beat by the market. The main reason for this is the costs that mutual funds charge. A fund's return is the total return of the portfolio minus the fees an investor pays for management and fund expenses. If a fund charges 2%, then you have to outperform the market by that amount just to be even. Here's where index funds enter the picture. Their main advantage is lower management fees than you would get from a regular mutual fund. An average non-index fund has an expense ratio of around 1.5%, whereas many index funds have an expense ratio of around 0.2%! The reason the costs are lower is because an index fund is not actively managed. Fund managers only need to maintain the appropriate weightings to match the index performance - a technique known as passive management. The deceptive thing about the "passive" label is that most indexes are actively selected. Take the S