Quantity and Quality of existing mutual funds?

Oldman answered 2 years ago …

Morningstar.com has free and various levels of paid analysis. One of their premium, paid services will screen a bunch of mutual funds and determine the common holdings (the overlap). Keep in mind that all gains in the tax sheltered accounts will be charged marginal rates upon withdrawal in retirement. It will not matter that the great capital gains in Davis or other mutual funds will have accumulated; the taxation will be the same as if they were zero coupon bonds you had bought in 1981 when long term treasuries yielded 18+ % for 30 years.
The advantage is that by currently reducing your income and sheltering all gains from intervening taxation, the gains can accumulate, untaxed interim. In about 5 years, looking ahead to retirement, etc., it might be wise to get a risk analysis ... if the market declines for a few years, how volatile are your holdings? When do you need to tap them?. At that point one could put a bit more into foreign and other uncorrelated investments and cash.
You can also get a piece of 4 cycle semilog graph paper and plot the year end values of your accounts against the vertical axis, the years on the horizontal (linear) axis. If you draw a pencil line through the scattered points, you can develop a crude, but sufficient growth rate, probably about 8-10 %/yr. Then you can project tha values into the future. If the accounts move above, shift some equities to money mkt or bonds. If the points are becoming more horizontal, then other types of investments (riskier, but potentially more rewarding) may be in order. Mutual funds have advantages, but one really serious drawback (beyond the expenses deducted by managers) : they pay gains when prices are high. They don't pay gains when prices of their securities have fallen. so continually buying into a fund whose shares have increased in NAV four-fold in 20 years, means that dollar cost averaging hasn't worked. At the end of each year, your reinvested gains have purchased fewer & fewer shares. it is probably time for you to begin thinking about investing in some stocks and ETFs in a taxable account. I say think about it, because the securities markets in the developed countries are getting more volatile and harder to "predict". But you could choose a few staple stocks to follow occasionally in the market listings or online; IBM? GE? YUM? SO? BUD? Do they move together? Do they pay you to hold them (i.e. dividend yield)? You might "paper trade" or create a hypothetical portfolio at Yahoo or MSN Money, or a bunch of other sites. I would then go to the research sites on the web to find out more about the theoretical hokldings; the news and evaluative sites that may - in one out of twenty riffs - suggest a reasonable new bit of fonancial info or insight. When I retired, the market crashed. But I had put aside sufficient cash and other sources of income that, for 5 years, I didn't need to sell into a down market. By the time you are 55 -60 years old, you might consider this too. I wish you well.