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Why would people ever invest in mutual fund? - Page 2

Blogs > DarkwindHK
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 Next All
Entropic
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
Canada2837 Posts
December 15 2010 16:20 GMT
#21
Can't go wrong with ETFs
Chill
Profile Blog Joined January 2005
Calgary25989 Posts
December 15 2010 16:38 GMT
#22
On December 16 2010 01:17 DarkwindHK wrote:
You do not need to know quant to invest. There is also no guarantee that they work anyways.



We cannot compare going to see a doctor and buying a mutual fund. Doctor is an expert in that field, and there are empirical proofs that they can help a patient.

However, there is no evident showing that wealth managers can do better than any average guy. In fact, fund managers regularly lose to astrologist and 8 year old girls in stock picking experiments.

Hmm that's fair and accurate, I never thought about it like that.
Moderator
bonifaceviii
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada2890 Posts
December 15 2010 16:42 GMT
#23
Mutual fund managers are experts at marketing their fund, that's about it.
Stay a while and listen || http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=354018
metaphoR
Profile Joined May 2010
United States199 Posts
December 15 2010 16:46 GMT
#24
On December 16 2010 01:17 DarkwindHK wrote:
You do not need to know quant to invest. There is also no guarantee that they work anyways.



We cannot compare going to see a doctor and buying a mutual fund. Doctor is an expert in that field, and there are empirical proofs that they can help a patient.

However, there is no evident showing that wealth managers can do better than any average guy. In fact, fund managers regularly lose to astrologist and 8 year old girls in stock picking experiments.


do you have any links for this? this is pretty interesting and it reminds me of how the gold fish or whatever it was could pick the fifa world cup winners better than "qualified" people who knew a lot about the teams and stats etc
XCLuSive
Profile Joined November 2009
Canada121 Posts
December 15 2010 17:14 GMT
#25
=( For every article/person I read and learn from saying that Mutual Funds are awesome and safe and easy, I come across another article/person that says it's bad.

I mean.. SERIOUSLY, why's it so complicated. So you're saying ETF and S&P500 Index > Mutual Funds?

Care to explain how it works, and what makes it different?
nothing less than legendary
Glacierz
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States1245 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-15 17:33:08
December 15 2010 17:24 GMT
#26
On December 15 2010 18:11 DarkwindHK wrote:
I think picking the right fund and right manager is at least 10 times more difficult than picking a stock. And the fact that "past performance does not indicate future return" just show the futility of this approach.


Actually if you worked long enough in the investment industry you will find that the opposite is true, but both are very difficult.

Mutual fund "NET OF FEES" tend to underperform the average benchmark, but it will not be fair to average all mutual funds into a single pool. You can always find managers that outperform somewhat consistently over time. If they are truly random, then you expect 50% to outperform and 50% to under perform in year 1, and 25% would have out performed in 2 consecutive years statistically speaking. However, research shows that somewhat over 33% outperforms 2 consecutive years, which means there is value in investing in mutual fund if you are able to pick the right ones.
Glacierz
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States1245 Posts
December 15 2010 17:37 GMT
#27
I have to agree that you shouldn't invest in mutual funds if you don't want to do some research. ETF is much more efficient if you are just trying to ride the beta.
bonifaceviii
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada2890 Posts
December 15 2010 17:42 GMT
#28
All the talent in fund management are in hedge funds. Mutual funds are for risk-averse lay people, which means they have a place, but it's not in performance.
Stay a while and listen || http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=354018
Glacierz
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States1245 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-15 17:53:11
December 15 2010 17:52 GMT
#29
On December 16 2010 02:42 bonifaceviii wrote:
All the talent in fund management are in hedge funds. Mutual funds are for risk-averse lay people, which means they have a place, but it's not in performance.


Not entirely true, there are mutual funds that employs significant leverage and active management, but you are right about hedge funds. 90% of people who know what they are doing are probably in Hedge Funds
azndsh
Profile Blog Joined August 2006
United States4447 Posts
December 15 2010 17:54 GMT
#30
because people don't know better.
sooch
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada299 Posts
December 15 2010 18:02 GMT
#31
On December 15 2010 18:11 DarkwindHK wrote:
It is also a mathematical truth that 50% of all investor will perform worse than average.

herp derp statistics...

I don't see anything wrong with people paying for a service that they don't have time to learn to do themselves...I mean sure you could paint your own garage door but you have to go out and research what paints are good for the material your garage door is made of, whether or not they're weather resistant, get all the supplies you require for painting together (remember, painting isn't a thing you do regularly), and then actually invest the time needed to do the painting. It's much easier to have someone do it for you, even if they might do a job slightly below your standards if you had done the entire thing yourself you've saved yourself a lot of time and headaches.

User was warned for this post
BrTarolg
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
United Kingdom3574 Posts
December 15 2010 18:06 GMT
#32
Well, imo mutual funds and pension funds suck because they cant use complex products to hedge themselves against a falling market

If you're going to invest, learn to do it yourself or have enough money to buy into a hedge fund.

For those who are smart enough to play poker and play starcraft, really you should be smart enough to do your own research to learn how to invest - its a lot of fun, its interesting, and if you don't find it interesting then you shouldn't be investing anyway.
The fundamentals (reading the ISM when it comes out for eg) are relatively straight forward and understanding basic fundas of a stock (such as what P/E means etc.) is something you can just teach yourself and research on the internet

At the very worst, stick all your money in the hang seng and you'll be fine
Ramiel
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
United States1220 Posts
December 15 2010 18:33 GMT
#33
Depending on the type of mutual fund you are investing in, high risk or low risk- they can both be a great way to diversify your assets, and the best part is- other people do it for you the low risk types are very popular becuase most of these types of mutual funds while having a marginal gain, are very safe and at least do increase some small percent quarter to quarter.
A thread vaguely bashing SC2? SWARM ON, LOW POST COUNT BRETHREN! DEFEND THE GLORIOUS GAME THAT IS OUR LIVELIHOOD
Insanious
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada1251 Posts
December 15 2010 19:09 GMT
#34
Mutual funds are there for people that want more than the interest their bank will give them... its for people that are like "I have $10,000 sitting in my chequing account wonder what I should do with it?"

In Canada, a lot of people put their money into Canada Savings Bonds... but the returns on those are so terrible it makes me sad/ So people want to put their money into something for like 30 years that makes a little more... they want to do 0 work, but want to make some interest since they have money lying around.

This is what they are for, there are few things you can throw your money into for 10,20,30 years and make safe money that you have to do 0 work on than mutual funds... most other things you jump from one thing to another when the markets start going south...
If you want to help me out... http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4b82744b816d3
kzn
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States1218 Posts
December 15 2010 23:02 GMT
#35
On December 16 2010 03:02 sooch wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 15 2010 18:11 DarkwindHK wrote:
It is also a mathematical truth that 50% of all investor will perform worse than average.

herp derp statistics...

I don't see anything wrong with people paying for a service that they don't have time to learn to do themselves...I mean sure you could paint your own garage door but you have to go out and research what paints are good for the material your garage door is made of, whether or not they're weather resistant, get all the supplies you require for painting together (remember, painting isn't a thing you do regularly), and then actually invest the time needed to do the painting. It's much easier to have someone do it for you, even if they might do a job slightly below your standards if you had done the entire thing yourself you've saved yourself a lot of time and headaches.


The point is not that pooled investing is a bad idea, the point is that actively managed funds consistently perform worse than market average.

There are 3 funds that have outperformed the market over the last 3 decades, and each one owes much of that to one incredibly trade they made rather than a number of good trades. The other funds that outperform are invariably private funds that you cannot get into unless you're working for the right people.

If you're just looking to invest in stocks, you would be far better in almost all cases to invest in an index fund, not a mutual fund.
Like a G6
gen.Sun
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States539 Posts
December 15 2010 23:38 GMT
#36
I'm so amused. In programmming this is called an inner platform effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect
DarkwindHK
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Hong Kong343 Posts
December 16 2010 01:29 GMT
#37
On December 16 2010 02:14 XCLuSive wrote:
=( For every article/person I read and learn from saying that Mutual Funds are awesome and safe and easy, I come across another article/person that says it's bad.

I mean.. SERIOUSLY, why's it so complicated. So you're saying ETF and S&P500 Index > Mutual Funds?

Care to explain how it works, and what makes it different?


They are not better, but they are CHEAPER in cost.

Its the other way around, mutual funds does not necessarily give better return than indexes. However, you know for sure they cost more.

Essentially, you are going to pay more for sure to get a chance of getting better return, together with a chance to get disastrous return.
Dont be too humble, you are not that great.
DarkwindHK
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Hong Kong343 Posts
December 16 2010 01:45 GMT
#38
On December 16 2010 01:46 metaphoR wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 16 2010 01:17 DarkwindHK wrote:
You do not need to know quant to invest. There is also no guarantee that they work anyways.



We cannot compare going to see a doctor and buying a mutual fund. Doctor is an expert in that field, and there are empirical proofs that they can help a patient.

However, there is no evident showing that wealth managers can do better than any average guy. In fact, fund managers regularly lose to astrologist and 8 year old girls in stock picking experiments.


do you have any links for this? this is pretty interesting and it reminds me of how the gold fish or whatever it was could pick the fifa world cup winners better than "qualified" people who knew a lot about the teams and stats etc


No link, but you can find this in TIMES of London, March 2002. Libraries may have it.

For the "no evident showing that wealth managers can do better than any average guy"; well... I cann show the "lack of" evident, because they do not exist.

You can understand it conceptually instead:

A professional gambler (investor) going to a casino to compete with the gambler (investor) from all over the world. Other investors include old ladies, little boy, astrologer, dice thrower, starcraft players....etc

However, in this casino, the chance of winning is not known by the gamblers, in fact, the chance of winning is not a constant while the reward is also an unknown. It is in this environment the profession gambler need to compete against other professional gamblers and also...the little girl.
Too bad it is not his lucky day, and he got the wrong stock and lose in the casino.

No amount of experience in investing will get you prepared for events like 1) Apple Inc release a new product and it doesn't sell/sell very well ; 2) Korean War 2.0.

Even if you know for certain iPhone 5 or Starcraft 3 will has exactly 61.257% chance of selling like hot cake and Korean War will happen with a chance of 1.024%, how can you translate that into investment strategy? What if the other 38.743% part and the Korean war 2.0 is what actually happened? (I guess you will not be the star analyst this year!)

Addition to that, unexpected events (like earthquake, flood) has much larger effects than expected events. And unexpected events...are really unexpected. (Fund manager are also human, so they did not expect it.)
Dont be too humble, you are not that great.
decafchicken
Profile Blog Joined January 2005
United States20088 Posts
December 16 2010 01:58 GMT
#39
On December 16 2010 00:11 DarkwindHK wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 15 2010 21:25 SlayerS_BunkiE wrote:
ur title should've been different since you're not actually against pooled investing, just anti active investment management

anyways, i do agree that in most cases (especially in developed markets), it is very hard to consistently outperform the index after management fees. indexed funds are usually the best way to go.

this is not always the case though. i thought it was but there really are extremely good asset managers who can consistently beat the index by A LOT.

but as you said, finding that manager is harder than just picking random stocks from the index (which would probably yield a similar result if you ended up picking an "average" asset manager)

o, before i forget, i once attended this conference where i heard something really cool. it was an asset manager that specialized in using pure mathematics. they hire really quant guys that they claim were able to use purely historical data (no regard at all to expected/future returns) to construct a portfolio that will consistently outperform the index by a small margin. they claim that they can consistently produce an information ratio of >0.5. there are constraints though like how developed the market is. they need enough liquidity since the portfolio will be trading stocks everyday, which could get expensive real fast in a developing market.


I can do those models, I have tried over 100 factors, so I already know which one work best in Hong Kong. Of course you need to update them regularly since one factor will not work forever.

Some of the factors that tend to work are: P/E, earning momentum and medium term share price trend. You can try it yourself with excel, its not that hard. Simple does not mean bad.


You mean people actually use that shit i learned in my finance class? :D
how reasonable is it to eat off wood instead of your tummy?
Steveh
Profile Joined October 2009
United States112 Posts
December 16 2010 04:03 GMT
#40
the issues you bring up are nothing new in the financial world; its impossible to predict the future

'The Black Swan' is a great book for anyone who finds this thread's contents interesting

someone already accurately pointed out mutual vs hedge fund differences. no need to state it again.

some resolutions to the OP's problems are: diversification, money management, max sector risks, max transaction risks, unbiased to either the long or short side, simple and robust systems.

these parameters are found more with indifferent hedge fund managerial systems as opposed to buy and hold mutual fund managers.

investing means you assume the unknown risks and try your best to ameliorate their loss of equity pain when they arrive.





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