Review of Kiplinger’s Mutual Fund Finder

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In the last couple weeks I’ve written quite a few posts about mutual funds.

I’ve written about the different classes of load funds you can expect to buy through a financial advisor, I’ve written about No load funds, and I’ve written about the difference between the loads and No loads. I’ve even managed to talk about ETF’s in a few of the posts, as well (surprise, surprise).

If you’ve read most of those posts, then pat yourself on the back; you know more about mutual funds then the majority of people out there. Armed with this knowledge, of the many pros and cons of mutual fund investing, it’s time to apply some of our new found wisdom.

Let’s start by looking at Kiplinger’s mutual fund finder. Much like anyone else, I came across this cool little ‘finder’ in the last couple weeks, while surfing the web. Which means I’ll barely have more experience with this particular tool than you. But the nice thing is you don’t need much to begin with, it’s pretty easy to use and it’s free.

A great fund screener

It allows you to enter whatever criteria you’re looking for in a mutual fund and then matches up your choices against Kiplinger’s database of (current) mutual fund information. You can narrow your search to stock funds, with different sizes and styles, or use it to profile bond funds.

All in all, it’s a great way to screen for the kind of fund you’re looking for, but there are a few minor limitations. Here’s a couple helpful tips in advance to save you some time:

• If you make a selection from the ‘Morningstar Star Rating’ pulldown menu, you will be limiting your search to that exact selection. It’s better to select ‘Any’ unless you are dead set on a specific star rating.
• Don’t input data in the ‘Manager Since’ field, there were no results pages every time I tried this.

Below you will see 4 different image thumbnails. Each one represents a different search I conducted using the ‘fund finder’. If you click on any one of them, it will open up to a larger (readable) version.

Included at the top of each page is the criteria I entered to get me to the page you’re viewing. Also, I’ve made a few hand written comments, reinforcing some of the more important points that I’ve been writing about for the past few weeks.

Mutual fund thumbnails

Click below to zoom in on image (Be sure to use your mouse to enlarge the image in your browser, if you still can’t see it clearly after opening)

Large Growth Fund

International Stock Fund

Small Value Fund

‘Hand Picked’ Funds

In conclusion

You will notice, if you study these different thumbnails, that some funds are showing exceptional performance, over the last 3 and 5 yrs, regardless of internal costs and expenses. If they continued to outperform like this, year after year, then the internal costs wouldn’t matter hardly as much to me.

But it’s nearly impossible to predict how long a fund will continue to outperform the market. What’s far more predictable is the cost structure a specific mutual fund or fund family exhibits, year over year.

The point here being, by knowing what to look for in a mutual fund, you can effectively control the internal costs, giving yourself the best chance of maximizing your investment performance over any significant period of time.

To further illustrate this point, I will be looking at a very cool calculator, in my next post, that quantifies a lot of these variables. This next calculator is going to blow you away…

Tags: fund finder, Mutual Funds