ePAROL - Economic News and Views

Feeling of unease grows...

The Lipper Mutual Fund Performance Index for the first half of the year came out, and gold lead the pack by a long shot. Their 10-fund index was up 27%, and the World Equity Funds Index showed that the 54 gold-oriented funds were up 25% for the last six months, too.

By contrast, when Lipper considers all 12,675 equity funds, the average return was less than 4%. Hahahaha! Official "trust me" government-reported inflation alone is running more than that! And real, old-school-way-of-measuring-inflation is running at least to 9%, being as conservative as I can.

So that means that the average mutual fund holder made 4%, on which a capital gains and income taxes are levied. But even assuming that the mutual fund holder pays no tax at all, he or she is still losing at least 5% a year in spending power! Losing! Losing 5% a year! Which is the optimistic scenario!

Link to the Full Article

posted by G @ 11:13 AM