How to Select the Top No Load Mutual Funds and ETFs

Given the extremely large number and variety of stock equity, bond fixed income, and equity mutual funds and ETFs, investors need a rational basis to select among them. For example, there are over 60,000 different mutual fund investment share classes sold worldwide. Some mutual funds and ETFs must be better than others, but which ones are they? How can you tell before the fact?

Without scientific selection criteria and a good understanding of which factors are more or less likely to increase your long-term risk-adjusted investment returns, you will make erroneous decisions based on false assumptions. The most obvious mistake that individuals make is to extrapolate past performance into the future. Superior past performance has simply not been shown to be a reliable predictor of superior future performance.

Low Costs Lead You to the Best No Load Fund

Financial industry sales people and investment advisors promote high cost mutual funds with superior past performance, because they are easier to sell to naive investors. Furthermore, most investment advisors and financial sales people themselves do not know any better. The financial services companies that they work for do not teach them about the findings of the investment research literature.

Instead, they teach their financial advisors how to sell investment products quickly whether or not these investments really are the best mutual funds and ETFs from the point-of-view of their clients. The cycle of performance chasing goes on endlessly. In the process, it damages the long-term financial success of millions upon millions of individual investors around the world.

Mutual fund sales loads and 12b-1 marketing fees reduce your long-term investment performance. These investment sales commissions dramatically reduce the size of your long-term investment portfolio. The true costs of mutual fund sales loads and mutual fund 12b1 fees are far larger that most investors understand. Furthermore, financial advisors and commissioned securities sales people almost always promote mutual funds and ETFs that are more expensive. You pay more to buy these funds and you pay more in the long run, because mutual funds with sales loads and 12b1 fees are more likely to come up short in comparison with low cost no load index funds .

Buy Low Cost No Load Mutual Funds and Hold Them for Years