Compare Mutual Funds
With These Key Statistics
The key statistics presented here should be used to screen and compare mutual funds to find those that are worthy of consideration for inclusion in your portfolio. Use of the key statistics listed below should get you all or most of the way through the screening process. It's important to remember that your selection of mutual funds should not be based solely on quantitative factors. Once you have identified some good funds, additional investigation is required to ensure that your final selections meet your criteria and will complement one another in your portfolio. At a minimum, you will need to determine if the funds that pass your screening are indeed what they say they are, as names can be misleading and style drift is all too common. Before you get started, you may want to refer to the section on Mutual Fund Types or to the list of mutual fund types, which includes links to descriptions of the various types of mutual funds. Key Statistics for Comparing and Evaluating Mutual FundsThe following are key statistics that you should use to compare and evaluate mutual funds within the various categories that represent your investment universe. You'll find many sources of these key statistics on the Web. Some are more comprehensive than others, so you'll have to try a few and decide which you like best.Mutual Fund Returns - Return - Arithmetic Mean
- Return - Geometric Mean
- Yield
- Risk-Adjusted Return
Mutual Fund Risk- Standard Deviation
- Beta
- R-squared
- Bond Duration
Mutual Fund Performance: Risk-to-Return- Coefficient of Variation
- Sharpe Ratio
- Treynor Ratio
The Expense Ratio, Turnover Rate & Manager Tenure- Expense Ratio
- Turnover
- Manager Tenure & Succession
Use these key statistics with your favorite mutual fund screener to find mutual funds that are good candidates for inclusion in your portfolio. If you don't have a favorite screener, do a Web search and find one you like, there are many to pick from. Yahoo! used to have an excellent screener, but it now seems to think there are no no-load mutual funds, which makes it essentially worthless. Once you're past the initial screening stage, though, Yahoo! Finance is an excellent resource for analyzing your candidates. You can type each mutual fund's ticker symbol or name into the "Get Quotes" box on the Yahoo! Finance home page to find detailed three-, five- and ten-year statistics to compare mutual funds that passed your initial screens. You'll find most of these statistics listed under "Risk." Return to the top of Compare Mutual Funds.
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