This has got to truly be the Golden Age of Mutual Funds. As opposed to the original Golden Age, a period of "primordial peace, harmony, stability, and prosperity" from which we have fallen, this Golden Age is one to which we have arrived. One key thing makes it a Golden Age: access to information.
Prospectuses and fund materials are available instantly. Vast reems of statistics : ditto. Financial articles and blogs. Even MUTUAL FUND MORON.
Fund managers no longer need be shadowy, anonymous figures. Interviews are on youtube, websites, and even on that 20th century device the television. Information, education, discussion, statistics......more, more, more and more. Further, the rise of indexing and numerous academic studies have given us more a scientific understanding of fund composition and performance than ever before.
Quotes for the day's activity can all be had right around 6:00 ET, two hours after the market close. In fact, one can pull up the most recent announceed portfolio of a given fund and track the market prices of the positions throughout the trading day. It's not hard or time-consuming to make a fairly accurate prediction of how a fund has done on a given day even before the market closes.
This is not even to mention closed end funds or ETFs. (The Moron, being a creature of the 20th Century pretty much does without them.)
So will the average person have better results due to all of this? Probably not.
Ignorance, fear, greed, stupidity, exploitation of the naive by financial predators -- overall, these easily cancel out the positives. For the many, and for the average person.
Further, many knowledgable people believe we may be in for a period of diminished returns from the market in general. MFM is not smart enough to know, but of course none of our Golden Age wonders could make up for a weak stock market.
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