In the "things your customers are reading about you" department today, Chuck Jaffe's most recent column in MarketWatch asks a simple question: are mutual funds worth the fees they charge?

Costs matter because they are the one thing that an investor can count on; returns, by comparison, will vary, but management takes its cut regardless. So if a large-cap growth fund is up 8% in a year and charges the average expense ratio for the category — 1.27%, according to Morningstar Inc. — the fund is going to be up 6.73% for the year, the gross return for the fund minus its cost.

Jaffe doesn't exactly answer the question with a simple yes or no; rather, he tells readers to weigh what they pay with what they get. He boils it down to one question: “Do I expect this fund to deliver returns superior to an appropriate index fund?”

For more details, check out the original article here. 

Edited by: Ben Geier


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