Academic

"Glum and Glummer"

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

That is the title of a Forbes article on the best and worst fund performers over the latest 12 months.  It shows that the five worst performing domestic stock funds posted losses of at least 60%.  And that even the best performing domestic stock funds had losses, though they ranged from .3% to 4.7%.  Certainly, such losses were better than the S&P 500's return last year, which Forbes indicated was -36.7%.  Domestic funds also faired better than foreign stock funds, whose best performers posted losses of at least 21% and worst performers had losses of at least 62%.  But emerging markets stock funds really took a hit: the best performers had losses of at least 39% and the worst performers had losses of at least 68%.  As these returns reveal, "Glum and Glummer" seems to appropriately capture the news with respect to fund performance this last year.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).