Talk:Mutual fund fees and expenses

Source of information and copyright
The Majority of the information in this article was basically copy from the SEC website. Given that I attributed my sources and it is a government authority thus in essense public property already I posted it on wikipedia. Paul.Paquette (talk) 18:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)


 * understandable. great job.

Expense Ratio for iShares S&P 500
I don't agree with the quoted amount of 0.09%. I'm changing this to 0.4% and citing the LSE document - or at least this will be my intention, not done a cite before. CreditQuant 17:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

SEC website
I did not write the preceding text (sorry I'm new to Wikipedia) I discovered independantly that you had used the text from the SEC Website. The citation of it was not apparent to me. I saw a website quoting the article: http://www.answers.com/topic/mutual-fund-fees-and-expenses and with this note: "Wikipedia information about mutual fund fees and expenses This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mutual fund fees and expenses". More from Wikipedia" Seems like a proper citation of the SEC as the source of the aritcle is in order. JPhilipW 20:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
I altered the article fairly substantially. I took out most of the information which was United States specific but included a "geographical differences" section where further country differences may be added in the future.

A lot of the United States specific information explained in an overly complex way how the fees are incurred in the fund. I didn't feel this had a place in an article about what the names and definitions of fees clients actually see was concerned.

I also divided the article up into "transactional fees" and "periodic fees", which I find sections the article up much more nicely.

Feel free to discuss.


 * It is impossible to speak about "mutual fund fees and expenses" without reference to a specific country's laws. The very calculation and reporting of each different type of fee, and even the enumeration of what types of fees should be reported, are all based on sovereign laws.  Fees that would be considered "expenses" in one jurisdiction might be considered "management fees" in a different jurisdiction.  For example, the 12(b)1 fee can be one of the most significant fees on a US Mutual fund.  But how would one even begin to describe a "12(b)1" fee without reference (implicit or explicit) to Section 12(b)1 of the US Investment Company Act?


 * Even the very term "mutual fund" is a product of the Investment Company Act of 1940 passed by the US Congress. Australia has super-annuation schemes, which are also a sort of mutual fund, but entirely different than US mutual funds.  The European Union passed the UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) in 1985 which introduced a common framework for what they call "collective investment schemes" (ie mutual funds).  Though many of the UCITS provisions were modeled on the US 1940 Act, there are many other provisions that are unique to the EU.


 * When talking about the different types of fees charged by or to a "mutual fund," it is literally impossible to talk about this fee or that fee without referring to a specific country's laws. Deleting country-specific information from this article would be like deleting country-specific information from an article about penal codes.  For example, it would be impossible to discuss "the" penalty for sodomy without mentioning that sodomy is legal in many countries and is punishable by death in other countries.  Without reference to one or more specific countries, the topic of "mutual fund fees" is meaningless, since what constitutes a mutual fund "fee" is literally defined by each country's laws.


 * Rather than deleting country-specific information, I would suggest that if an editor finds certain information to be too country-specific, it would be more useful to the reader to add more country specific information from other countries. Deleting information almost never increases the spread of knowledge.  In contrast, adding additional information from diverse sources doesn't just increase the quantity of knowledge; it also increases the reader's understanding of issues. Tpkaplan (talk) 23:05, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Formatting
It currently seems as though "Expenses matter relative to investment type" is a subcategory of Geographical Differences; is this intended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.218.67.82 (talk) 21:45, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Copyright; Benchmark Fees in US
I added a table of median fees pubished by Morningstar. I've had a lot of bots remove information that the bot thought was copyright violation. If there is a human behind the bot, please consider the following. The information I added was free of copyright protection under the Fair Use Doctrine, which holds that excerpts from copyrighted information are not protected by the copyright act in certain circumstances. These circumstances clearly apply in this case. The specific decision about whether a use constitutes "Fair Use" is based on the following: 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes 2. The nature of the copyrighted work 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole 4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

With respect to (1), the use is a non-profit education purpose. With respect to (2), the work is published on a blog on the internet which is freely accessible by anyone; indeed, the whole point of the blog is to get people to read the information. With respect to (3), the table was only a small part of the overall article. With respect to (4), the use can't possible affect the potential market for the data, since the copyright holder is giving the data away for free.

Therefore, if you're running a bot and you think this information violates copyright, consider whether any independent judge could ever come to the conclusion that the Fair Use Doctrine does not apply in this case. It would be very easy to obtain a legal opinion from any large law firm that this this use is protected by the Fair Use Doctrine. On the flipside, I doubt anyone could find a reputable lawyer who would be willing to write an opinion stating that this is not a "fair use."Tpkaplan (talk) 23:19, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Expense Ratio Benchmarks & No Load Funds
There appears to be some ambiguity about terms here. The section on No Load Funds identifies them as C-shares, meaning fee when buying or selling, but a higher maintenance cost per year. Sometimes people use "No Load Funds" to refer to passively managed funds with very low expense ratios. The information from Morningstar shows No Load funds having a lower expense ratio than Front-Load funds, which doesn't make sense given the information. Since there is a fee up front, the annual costs should be lower for Front-Load funds. Perhaps Morningstar is using the term differently or perhaps they are spreading the front load over x years. Either way, some clarification is needed. Kmaricq (talk) 03:29, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The section on no load funds is completely inaccurate. No load funds do not charge any sales charges or, in most cases, distribution (12b-1) fees that are paid to financial intermediaries (brokers, advisers, etc.). Class C shares include a contingent deferred sales charge (CDSC) that is charged to the client if the shares are sold withing one year of purchase. In addition to the 12b=1 fee (usually 1% of assets) that is paid out annually. Gitman80 (talk) 14:23, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Adding I class shares
Any objections to adding "I" - Institutional class shares?
 * No front/back end load
 * Large min. investment of $100k to $500k to $1 million+
 * Lowest expense ratios