With so many Mutual Fund families and Mutual Funds its important to do thorough research on the funds you own. Many people own numerous funds in their brokerage accounts, their 401ks and other type of retirement accounts and have no idea what type of funds they own, its performance, or if its suitable to their risk tolerance and investment goals. We offer many types of research and evaluation tools to educate you on the performance of the funds you own or assist you in choosing the correct funds most likely to suit your financial goals. We also have fundamental philosophies in helping us in doing our due diligence.

• The first things we look at are the fund's stated goals and investment philosophy. Most mutual funds have clear and discernible strategies. The strategy should make sense and appeal to us if we are going to trust a fund with your money.
  
• Next we evaluate how the fund has performed in real life. It's important to compare the results of any mutual fund's strategy to its stated objectives. We use benchmarks, which compare funds based on the indexes they are listed on, to gauge the performance history of a fund. We want funds that consistently outperform its peer group over different lengths of time (1,3,5,10, and 15 years)
• We look for how old a fund is. Some may be too young without a long enough track record for us to feel comfortable recommending. We want to see how a fund has performed in different types of markets ( Bull and Bear ) 
• We look into the management team and how it conducts its operations and the length of its members' experience. Some management teams include young talent. That isn't necessarily bad, but it can indicate a lack of experience with the ups and downs of the market. We study the turnover rate to gauge the longevity of the fund managers and their commitments to the company.
• Every mutual fund has a variety of operational expenses that cut into your profits. We look for a fund that minimizes these costs through efficient operations. Any competent management team should be able to keep the inevitable costs of operation to a minimum.
• A mutual fund's holdings represent the securities (stocks or bonds) held in the fund. In general, mutual funds have an ideal range for the total number of holdings and this range depends on the category or type of fund. For example, index funds and some bond funds are expected to have a large number of holdings, often in the hundreds or even thousands of stocks or bonds. For most other funds, there are disadvantages to having too few or too many holdings.

When doing our research and analysis of clients portfolios from other firms or their 401ks one concern we frequently see is fund overlap. Fund Overlap occurs when an investor owns two or more mutual funds that have similar objectives and therefore hold many of the same securities. For a simple example, if an investor owns two stock mutual funds and they both invest in many of the same stocks, the similarities create an effect of reducing the benefits of diversification by increasing exposure to those same stocks -- an unwanted increase in market risk.

There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a non-diversified portfolio. Diversification does not protect against market risk. Investing in mutual funds involves risk, including possible loss of principal. 

Investing in mutual funds involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Fund value will fluctuate with market conditions and it may not achieve its investment objective.