Best Rated No Loads

I might guess that everyone on the planet knows what a no-load fund is and why such funds exist. In a nutshell, they’re the alternative to load mutual funds and their sales commissions—historically, as much as 8% but commonly 5% or so. 

Most mutual funds and some exchange-traded funds are actively managed portfolios. You might do well by putting all your investment cash into just one such fund and holding it till death (yours or the fund’s).

I’d guess many of us do-it-yourself portfolio managers prefer to gain diversification and hope to gain profitability and safety as well as simplicity by dividing our cash either among no-load funds or ETFs, or a mix of both.

Past performance of any investment is not necessarily an indicator of future performance, but past performance usually accounts for the selection of investments for a watch list. Ask anyone who likes to bet the horses.

One such list at this writing shows BIPIX (+39.74%) as the three-year leader in price performance, followed by BIPSX (+38.39%) and PETAX (+27.76%). The first two of those three are biotech-focused and the third and fourth, PETDX (+27.74%), specialize in real estate. So for diversification one might forget about BIPSX and PETDX and bring in the fifth-place fund, TCPIX (+27.49%).

My calculator tells me those three chosen no-load mutual funds averaged gains of 31.67% for the three-year period.

There’s much more to consider when investing in mutual funds, and MSN.com presents Morningstar’s excellent discussion of them.

Never forget: All investments and savings are gambles on the unknown future and thus subject to loss.