The word investment does mean that there is a risk involved. Quite a lot of people do not invest too much in a single position. In a way they manage risk by just not taking it in the first place.

Since the fund company had to pay the advisor the commission what they do is increase the MER of the fund by about 0.5% compared to Class A units. This means your return will be 0.5% lower each year compared to if you had bought the Class A fund. When you buy this type of fund you are also locked in for a period of seven years (time frame could vary). If you sell prior to this you have to pay a penalty to the fund company allowing them to recoup the commission they paid to the advisor. Between the locked in period and the higher MER this option is clearly not in the client’s best interest.

Just in case if the company falls down in the market, shareholders get the money which is equal to their ownership value. You can invest in individual stocks or closed end funds. It is always better to read in details about the various mutual fund of India before investing money. More importantly you will need to access your own goals and the risks involved. Asset allocation is also very important or else you may find your portfolio to have funds that are all invested in the same thing. A good portfolio will have diversification and will reduce the risk.

In Feb 2010 Standard & Poor’s launched its most recent Canadian Indices Versus Active Funds Scorecard with data for the five year period ending December 31, 2009. Below are a couple quotes from the report. “Over longer periods, we continue to observe indices outperforming the majority of domestic funds. In three-year and five-year periods, only 12.5% and 7.4%, respectively, of actively managed Canadian Equity funds have outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index.”

I took the most widely owned Canadian equity fund, the RBC Canadian Equity Fund and compared the holding to the RBC Canadian Index Fund. The data used is from the RBC 2009 semi annual report which had the holdings as of June 30, 2009. The majority of the investments held in the two funds, 77.36%, were the same, with 22.64% being different. It is only the returns of this 22.64% of unique assets of these two funds and total fees which will have an impact on the variance of their returns. The MER of the RBC Canadian Equity Fund was 1.97% and the RBC Canadian Index Fund was 0.68% a difference of 1.29%.

There is a maximum commission the advisor is allowed to charge, set by the fund company, but there is no minimum. It is possible for your advisor to sell you this type of fund and not charge you a commission at all. If you pay a commission this money goes to your financial advisor and the firm they work for. In addition to this commission your financial advisor will collect a trailer fee directly from the mutual fund company as long as you own the mutual fund. These trailer fees are normally about 1% and are paid from the MER of the fund.

To learn more visit: Retirement Financial Advisor

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