It’s Time to Squeeze Some Lemons — Q4, 2009
It’s time again for our quarterly lemon-squeezing ritual. That’s right, it’s time for us to expose the worst-performing mutual funds for what they really are — sour investment vehicles that will make your portfolio pucker.
For Q4, 2009, the Mutual Fund Lemon List contains 1,566 mutual funds totaling $651 billion in assets! Now, to be classified as a lemon, the fund must pass strict screening criteria: it must underperform its peer group average for the last 12 months, as well as for the last three and five year periods.
Incredibly, out of this quarter’s universe of 1,566 lemon funds, over 38% (a total of 605) actually had negative annualized returns over the past five years.
It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that investors need to wake up to the reality that many mutual funds just can’t perform as well as those exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with the same investment objective. Sadly, the result is that many investors are losing money that they really cannot afford to lose.
There really is no reason to continue investing in under-performing mutual funds. To find out if you own a lemon fund, simply click here.
Jim Woods is a 30-plus-year veteran of the markets with varied experience as a broker, hedge fund trader, financial writer, author and newsletter editor.
His books include co-authoring, “Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the Eco Revolution,” and “The Wealth Shield: How to Invest and Protect Your Money from Another Stock Market Crash, Financial Crisis or Global Economic Collapse.” He’s also ghostwritten many books and articles, as well as edited content for some of the investment industry’s biggest luminaries. Read more about Jim Woods.
