Decoding Fund Brochures

• Joshua M Brown
• December 14th, 2009

I've been reading these things for 14 years, I think I finally got the hang of it. Feel free to use this as a reference guide during your next mutual, exchange traded or closed end fund selection.

Here's the all-text version:

Fund Brochure Says...	What It Really Means...
Ultra	Leveraged to the Hilt
Global Growth	We'll Chase Stocks For You in Whichever Country is Most Overheated Right Now
Clean/ Green	A Basket of Government-Subsidized Experiments and Some Shares of GE
Deep Value	We Will Invest in Sewing Machine and Typewriter Companies
Premium	We Will Pay Up for High-Multiple Stocks/ You Will Pay Up in Fees
Socially Responsible	No Such Thing - All Corporations are Evil, Sucker
Diversified	We Will Basically Buy the Index and Go Golfing
Enhanced	Uses Exotic Derivatives You've Never Heard Of
Balanced	We Will Underperform Both the Bond AND the Stock Market.  You're Welcome.
Aggressive Growth	Collection of Chinese Online Gaming Stocks and New Jersey Biotech Startups
Lifecycle	We Can See 20 Years Into the Future, Only Putnam Knows When and How You Will Die
Moderate Allocation	Gutless Fund Manager
Quantitative	Manager Will Take Credit for Up Years, Blame Computers for Down Years
Endeavor/ Opportunities	We Will Throw Darts
Core	No Need to Spread it Out, Send Us Everything You Have

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