Mutual Funds For Dummies®, 6th Edition

Chapter 9. Buying Funds from the Best Firms

In This Chapter

• Becoming familiar with the best and worst places to buy funds

• Letting discount brokers work for you

• Knowing when hiring an adviser is appropriate

Hundreds of investment companies offer thousands of fund options. However, only a handful of these fund companies offer many top-notch funds, so in this chapter, I tell you which companies are the best places for your fund investing.

Note

Some other good individual funds are run by companies not mentioned in this chapter. (I recommend specific funds in Part IV of this book.) In addition to recommending the best parent fund companies, I also recommend the best discount brokers. Although these guys are slightly more expensive, discount brokers make buying the best funds from different fund companies and holding all the funds in a single account a lot easier.

Finding the Best Buys

When studying the different mutual funds companies, you may see a lot of different funds. Some are better than others. Using the criteria in Chapter 7, this chapter presents the best buys. In this section, I discuss the best companies through which to invest in funds directly. Check out the Appendix for each company's contact information. Note: In the fund company descriptions, I devote more space to those companies whose funds I recommend the most in this book. Some good funds are offered by companies not on this short list — please see Chapters 11 through 14 for all the specific fund picks.

The Vanguard Group ...