Total Stock Fund

  

Categories: Stocks

You don’t like leaving things out. Even as a kid, you made sure that everyone got picked for playground basketball. You made sure the asmathic kid got to go on the Beaver Scout camping trip. You would have invited the Elephant Man to the prom, if he hadn't died 130 years before you were born. You don’t want anyone excluded from anything.

The total stock fund is a perfect investment vehicle for you. It's a fund that includes all stocks within a particular group. If you have a biotech total stock fund, it holds all the stocks that are considered to be in the biotech sector. If you have a large cap total stock fund, it has all the stocks considered large caps. If you have an all-market total stock fund, it has alllll the stocks (that meet certain requirements; penny stocks don't count, for instance).

These funds are for investors who foresee a general rise in a particular segment of the market (or even the market as a whole), but don't want to make any judgments about winners and losers. They just want to take advantage of the overall market move.

Or, like you, they're sensitive souls and feel bad when some stocks get left out.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What's the Difference Between M...121 Views

00:00

And finance allah shmoop what's the difference between mutual funds

00:05

and index funds The answer this guy or well this

00:10

team what do they do They manage the mutual fund

00:15

mutually together You know what nemo They make bets on

00:19

apple and amazon in crotchless tuxedo pants Dot com will

00:23

these bets or into teligent investments In the parlance of

00:26

the industry our elements oven actively managed fund The mutual

00:31

fund is active in that it buys and sells hoping

00:35

to be smarter than the market and find areas you

00:38

know where they're inefficiencies where investors are throwing out the

00:41

baby with the bath water so that they buy the

00:44

shares here a twelve bucks and hope to sell them

00:47

if they hit thirty bucks in two years when the

00:49

new products get released and people are going absolutely bonkers

00:53

for self velcro ing neckties or whatever and index generally

00:57

stands pat on the hand It's dealt throughout the course

01:00

of the year making only small tweaks to invested amount

01:03

so that the fund itself conforms to the structure or

01:06

rules it set out when it was created But there

01:10

are a few vital and insidious differences that should make

01:13

investors today very wary about investing in mutual funds or

01:17

any actively managed fund When mutual funds first became popular

01:21

the investing marketplace was kind of the wild wild west

01:24

that was the nineteen fifties and sixties and a savvy

01:27

fund manager could beat the market by five and even

01:30

twenty percent per year year over year It was kind

01:33

of a golden age of mutual funds and money flowed

01:36

into them But like all good things this market wrinkle

01:39

easy winds and the investing world had to come to

01:42

an end Why competition when there were only a few

01:46

mutual funds out there and a few private investors it

01:49

was relatively easy to identify baby bathwater things you know

01:53

diamonds in the rough Today there are literally thousands of

01:57

mutual funds With such massive competition performance relative to the

02:01

market has lagged dramatic In fact over a typical seven

02:05

to ten year holding period only a very small handful

02:08

of mutual funds beat the typical index fund investing in

02:11

the same or analogous areas of stocks or bonds It's

02:15

like one in twenty ever really beat the market and

02:18

it gets worse Mutual funds charge relatively large fees compared

02:21

With index funds whereas a typical index fund might charge

02:24

twenty basis points to manage your money that is twenty

02:27

cents for every hundred bucks you have with them for

02:30

year The analogous mutual fund My charge One percent or

02:34

more that's five times surprise for demonstrably no better investment

02:38

results and wait It gets even worse Mutual funds trade

02:42

stocks and bonds and other securities index funds rarely trade

02:46

or if they do it's a very small amount of

02:47

trading around the margin keeping index in compliance with its

02:50

legal charter But many mutual funds have turn over the

02:54

apple variety of like fifty eighty or even one hundred

02:57

percent Turn over means that a fund has sold the

03:00

stock to realize a taxable gain You know book a

03:04

profit by taking cash from selling the stock or to

03:07

realize a loss sometimes as well we'll each time of

03:10

fund transact It pays a commission to our friendly excellent

03:14

golf skilled brokers but more painful to most investors is

03:18

that in transacting the fund realizes taxable game So what

03:22

does that mean Well here's the math If your mutual

03:24

fund is up twelve percent given year when the market's

03:26

up ten percent it would be an absolute top of

03:29

the pyramid performance here For the fun of beating the

03:31

market by two hundred basis points would likely mean that

03:34

mutual fund was in the top forty right up there

03:37

with rina's latest it single So what is that awesome

03:41

performance after tax for the mutual fund Well if the

03:44

fund had traded like the typical one it would have

03:47

had turnover of about sixty percent of its assets and

03:50

half of those sales would get ordinary income tax treatment

03:53

think high rates of something like forty percent with federal

03:56

and state taxes combined for most and long term gain

03:59

of twenty percent for the rest Well the wealthy pay

04:02

higher taxes so we're rounding down the numbers here even

04:04

being conservative So if half of the sixty percent or

04:07

thirty percent of the gain of twelve percent which is

04:09

around four percent his tax at forty percent then take

04:12

away one point six percent from the performance to get

04:14

an after tax net result number Then after another thirty

04:17

percent tax at the long term gain rate of twenty

04:20

percent you'd have take away another point six percent so

04:22

in total you'd have to subtract one point six plus

04:25

point six or two point two percent from the twelve

04:27

percent humongous rock star year to net nine point eight

04:30

percent in after tax returns Nope not very exciting relative

04:34

to that index fund And yes there are differences here

04:37

even important ones But the bottom line is that if

04:39

a huge performance top two percent fun has results Not

04:42

much better and or maybe worse than just a basic

04:45

index funds Why does anyone invest in mutual funds anymore 00:04:49.487 --> [endTime] Well this guy

Up Next

Finance: What Are Mutual Funds?
189 Views

What are mutual funds? Mutual funds are an aggregation of stocks, professionally managed for a "small" fee. Investors wanting exposure to a given a...

Finance: What are Different Types of Mutual Funds?
20 Views

What are the different types of mutual funds? There are many different types of mutual funds, including bond funds, equity funds, money market fund...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)