The Intelligent Investor: Investing in Investment Funds

Chapter 9 - Investing in Investment Funds
Graham basically says that there are three questions you need to answer before investing in any fund.

1. Is there any way by which the investor can assure himself better than average results by choosing the right funds? [...]

2. If not, how can he avoid choosing funds that will give him worse than average results?

3. Can he make intelligent choices between different types of funds - e.g., balanced versus all-stock, open-end versus closed-end, load versus no-load?

Graham states that in general, individuals who invest in balanced funds tend to do better than individuals who invest in individual common stocks. The reason is simple: a person who is not an expert at picking individual stocks and balancing a portfolio is usually better off in the hands of a professional money manager even after the costs.

However (and this is big), Graham largely seems to suggest that the fees in a typical mutual fund are far too high and the time invested in finding a bargain fund (one with good results with limited costs) is well worth the time. He also believes that you should not expect to ever radically beat the market with a fund, and that funds who have astounding short term gains are usually not playing a healthy long-term gain - something that’s been shown over and over again over the history of investing.



Commentary on Chapter 9
Zweig has the advantage of knowledge of three more decades of investing history and he definitely uses it here. For the most part, Zweig applies Graham’s three big questions to modern mutual funds - and the results aren’t pretty.

Zweig seems to conclude that managed mutual funds are not a good investment for the typical investor. Over a long period, very few funds even manage to match the market, let alone beat the market. Why is this? Assuming there were no fees or costs, a truly average fund would match the market and (in theory) half of all funds would do that well or better. However, once you add in fees and costs, this sinks many of those market-beaters to a rate of return worse than the overall market.

Given that, though, Zweig is a big fan of index funds, as they overcome several of the problems with managed funds. They’re designed merely to match the market with an extremely low cost, which means that a typical index fund should beat a solid majority of mutual funds covering the same area.

Of course, Zweig advises that even if you’re using an index fund strategy, you still need to pay attention to diversification and should not have all of your eggs in one basket. Just because you’re invested with index funds doesn’t mean you shouldn’t balance your portfolio between stocks, bonds, and cash.

Ref: The Intelligent Investor: Investing in Investment Funds