You may need to start looking for a new financial advisor if your current one has put any of these high-fee, low-return "Mutual Fund Misfires of the Market" into your portfolio.
High fees plus poor performance: It's a pretty simple formula for a bad mutual fund. Some are worse than others - and some are so bad that they have earned a "Strong Sell" on the Zacks Rank, the lowest ranking of the nearly 19,000 mutual funds we rank daily.
Below, you'll read about some of the funds included in our current list of "Mutual Fund Misfires of the Market." And if by chance you're invested in any of these misfires, we'll help and review some of our highest Zacks Ranked mutual funds.
3 Mutual Fund Misfires
Now, let's take a look at three market misfires.
Camelot Premium Return A (CPRFX): 2.71% expense ratio and 1% management fee. CPRFX is classified as an Allocation Balanced fund, which seeks to invest in a balance of asset types, like stocks, bonds, and cash, and including precious metals or commodities is not unusual. With a five year after-expenses return of 1.17%, you're mostly paying more in fees than returns.
Hartford World Bond C (HWDCX): HWDCX is an International Bond - Developed fund, and these funds funds focus on fixed income securities from developed nations apart from the United States. This usually results in countries like Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and Australia dominating the list of top holdings. HWDCX offers an expense ratio of 1.75% and annual returns of 1.42% over the last five years. Even if this fund can be positioned as a hedge during the recent bull-market, paying more in fees than returns over the long-term should never be an acceptable result.
Templeton Emerging Markets Small Cap C (TCEMX): This fund has an expense ratio of 2.62% and management fee of 1.35%. TCEMX is a part of the Non US - Equity fund category, many of which will focus across all cap levels, and will typically allocate their investments between emerging and developed markets. With an annual average return of 1.8% over the last five years, the only thing absolute about this absolute return fund is that it absolutely deserves to be on our "worst offender" list.
3 Top Ranked Mutual Funds
Since you've seen the most noticeably lowest Zacks Ranked mutual funds, how about we take a look at some of the top ranked mutual funds with the least fees.
JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) Tax Aware Equity C (JPECX) is a winner, with an expense ratio of just 1.44% and a five-year annualized return track record of 10.44%.
Franklin DynaTech R (FDNRX) has an expense ratio of 1.08% and management fee of 0.46%. With a much more diversified approach, FDNRX--part of the Sector - Tech mutual fund category--gives investors a way to own a stake in the notoriously risky tech sector. With annual returns of 16.2% over the last five years, this is a well-diversified fund with a long track record of success.
Capital Group US Equity (CUSEX): Expense ratio: 0.43%. Management fee: 0.43%. CUSEX is a Large Cap Growth option; these mutual funds purchase stakes in numerous large U.S. companies that are expected to develop and grow at a faster rate than other large-cap stocks. CUSEX has produced a 11.63% over the last five years.
Bottom Line
These examples underscore the huge range in quality of mutual funds - from the really bad to the astonishingly good. There is no reason for your advisor to keep your money in any fund that charges more than you get in return (unless they're getting something out of it, like a high commission).
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Zacks Investment Research