Mutual Funds

Books about mutual funds selected and reviewed by Report on Business writer Andrew Allentuck.

All About Index Funds: The Easy Way to Get Started

by Richard A. Ferri

All About Index Funds is American content, but the Canadian reader can disregard discussions of 401-k plans and 12-b fees and stick to the argument for indexing. There is hardly a better compact discussion of the origins and growth of the industry. As a provocative read and as a reference work, Mr. Ferri has produced a work that is simply superb
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Gordon Pape's 2003 Buyer's Guide to Mutual Funds

by Gordon Pape and Eric Kirzner

The oldest and perhaps the most respected of Canadian fund manuals, Gordon Pape's Guide to Mutual Funds is thorough and wise. For the investor who wants management and the hand holding that managers and advisors provide, there is still no better guide than Gordon Pape's 2003 Buyer's Guide to Mutual Funds.
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Morningstar Funds 500 2002 ed.

For the investor who wants to get U.S.-based mutual funds, the Morningstar 500 is an essential reference. The numbers are vital, the writing is clear and honest. For accuracy and for candor, it sets a standard that many Canadian mutual fund guides could do well to emulate.
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Exchange Traded Funds

by Jim Wiandt and Will McClatchy

The prudent investor in exchange traded funds should, indeed must, get this book, absorb it, and then understand what it means to buy indices with no intervening manager to monitor risk.
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Hedge Funds: Courtesans of Capitalism

by Peter Temple

The investor who wants to plunge into a hedge fund should read this book first. Forget the nonsense about ladies of easy virtue. There's a good index, a fine bibliography and a very good mind at the keyboard that produced this excellent book.
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When I Grow Up I'm Going to Be a Millionaire: A Children's Guide to Mutual Funds

by Ted Lea

This is a book that a parent can read to a child as a made up dialogue. With caveats that children are excluded from owning volatile securities for their own good and that managed Canadian equity and bond mutual funds tend not to earn their management fees over periods of 10 to 15 years or more, this book is a modest introduction to investing at a level children can understand.
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Unseen Power: How Mutual Funds Threaten the Political and Economic Wealth of Nations

by Adam Harmes

Unseen Power is interesting as an attack on mutual fund management. Author Harmes has no trust for the market and his recommendations, if turned into policy, would wreck much of the wealth that mutual funds and pension funds have created. But if you want to know what social critics think of the process of wealth creation by institutional investors, read the book.
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Mutual Funds for Canadians for Dummies

by Andrew Bell

Better than this Dummies version of Mutual Funds for Canadians, it doesn't get. Even sophisticated fund investors, the ones who know about the tendency of markets to equalize returns, the ones who know how to use dynamic asset allocation (sell the year's sectoral winners, buy the year's sectoral losers), can find instruction and good stories in it. Buy the book. Give it to your friends. And read it over and over. It's that fine.
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Funds 2001: Canada's Top 200 Mutual Funds

by Investor's Digest

All-Star Funds 2001 is a compendium of fund performance back to 1991 and a place to start in evaluating portfolios. But use the data with care, for the past is no guide to the future of mutual fund performance.
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The Mutual Fund Wealth Builder: A Profit Building Guide for the Savvy Mutual Fund Investor

by Dick Fabian

For the reader prepared to trade funds actively and to accept the attendant costs, The Mutual Fund Wealth Builder has valuable advice. But use it with care. Historically, the odds are against the investor who tries.
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Stop Buying Mutual Funds: Easy Ways to Beat the Pros Investing on Your Own

by Mark J. Heinzl

Stop Buying Mutual Funds is both a prophetic book of what lies ahead and a manual for investors who want to keep more of the returns of their money at risk and give less of it to underperforming managers.
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Top Funds 2001: Building Your Mutual Fund Portfolio for the 21st Century

by Nick Fallon, Riley Moynes and Chris Moynes

This is a useful book of insights into how mutual funds are run and how they can benefit investors. The reader should be aware of the authors' assertion that managed mutual funds are a fundamentally sound investment. If the reader can be a little skeptical, then Top Funds 2001 can be a useful shelf reference and even a quite readable guide to buying funds.
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Gordon Pape's 2001 Buyer's Guide to Mutual Funds

by Gordon Pape, Richard Croft and Eric Kirzner

For those investors who want to rely on past performance of funds to divine their future results, Mr. Pape's annual guide is definitive.
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Gordon Pape's 2001 Buyer's Guide to RRSPs

by Gordon Pape and David Tafler

For a walk through the fine points of Registered Education Savings Plan transfers to RRSPs and other fine points of regulations, this is a valuable guide. It's also one that can be found in other books by Mr. Pape's very productive RRSP and mutual fund shop.
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Core and Explore 2001: The Investing Rush Without Ruin

by Duff Young

Come and Explore can be a first book on funds for the beginning investor or a valuable insight for the experienced mutual fund investor. If the advice is more tentative than that offered by other mutual fund books, the cautions against foolishness are more valuable. Anyone who invests in funds need to know what Mr. Young has to say.
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The Best of the Best: Mutual Funds & Blue Chip Stocks for Canadians

by Wilfred Vos and Bruce MacDougall

Call this book an enhanced shopping list and you've got a good sense of what it is. It's for the investor building an investment portfolio rather than entrusting the job to a broker or financial advisor. And for that, it's a good reference to keep at hand.
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Common Sense on Mutual Funds

by John C. Bogle

In a blurb for this book, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett calls Mr. Bogle, "cogent, honest and hard-hitting - a must read for every investor." And that's about right. Almost any mutual fund investor can get $23.95 of value out of this excellent work.
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John Bogle on Investing: The First Fifty Years

by John Bogle

The experienced mutual fund investor should find hours of enjoyment in Mr. Bogle's memoirs and collected writings. More than any other person, he brought the power of equity investing to the masses. Today, he remains not just an industry insider, but a radical critic of the industry.
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The Money Machine: How the Mutual Fund Industry Works - and How to Make It Work for You

by Daniel Stoffman

For the less experienced mutual fund investor, The Money Machine can teach the valuable lesson that what heavy management and sales fees pay for is selling which, while good for the sellers, has little to do with performance obtained by investors.
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All About Bonds and Bond Mutual Funds

by Esme Faerber

For the investor who has reason to invest in the U.S. bond market through a U.S. brokerage and wants to use a mutual fund for that purpose, this book is a superb guide.
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Getting Started in Mutual Funds

by Alvin Hall

Canadians can gain from the technical information on sales and redemption fee calculations in Mr. Hall's book. And for Canadians thinking of opening U.S. brokerage accounts in order to buy highly rates U.S.-based funds, it is an essential guide.
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Investing the Billionaire's Way: The Genius of Patience

by Richard Charlton, Ned Goodman

Investing the Billionaire's Way explains why value investing should work over the long term. Mr. Charlton's style is pleasant, chatty, fact-filled and informed. For an investor with little experience in mutual funds or stocks, this is a fine introduction.
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Mutual Fundamentals: Canada's Guide to Quality Mutual Funds

by Jim Yih, Neil Sawers

For the beginning mutual fund investor, a brief, very readable book of wisdom.
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The Power of Index Funds: Canada's Best-Kept Investment Secret

by Ted Cadsby

The Power of Index Funds is a valuable manual on index investing and the definitive book on the subject in Canada.
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