Mutual funds

Mutual funds pool resources from a lot of individuals and companies and invest these resources in diversified portfolios of bonds, stocks and money market instruments. An open-ended mutual fund the main type of mutual fund continuously permits shareholders to sell redeem outstanding shares and investors to buy new shares at any time. The worth of these shares is determined by the value of the mutual fund's holding assets. Two major advantages characterise mutual funds. First mutual funds offer opportunities to small investors to invest in financial securities and diversify risk. Second mutual funds obtain advantage of lower transaction costs when they buy larger blocks of financial securities. There are two sections in the mutual fund industry long-term funds as well as short-term funds. Long-term funds comprise bond funds the funds that contain fixed-income debt securities and equity funds the funds that contain stock securities and hybrid funds that contain both debt and stock securities. Short-term funds are represented by money market mutual funds, funds that contain various mixes of money market securities and partially allow shareholders to write cheques against the value of their holdings the presence of deposit-type accounts makes money market mutual funds to some extent similar to depository institutions.

In the USA mutual funds are the second most significant financial intermediary in terms of asset size. In fact they are larger in comparison of the insurance industry but smaller than the commercial bank industry. The mutual assets of the nation's mutual funds increased to $9.5 trillion in 2006 according to the Investment Company Institute's official survey of the mutual fund industry.

Activity 2.5

From the 2007 Investment Company detail Book formed by the Investment Company. Write a brief explanation of how you think these events have determined the historical trend of the industry as described in Table US Mutual Fund Industry Number of Funds, Total Net Assets, Number of Share Classes and Number of Shareholder Accounts (2010 Investment Company

                                                                  Intermediated funds by type of financial intermediary

Summing up as displayed the total funds intermediated by US financial intermediaries are US$25.17 trillion in year 2006. Commercial banks account for the maximum proportion followed by insurance companies, mutual funds and S&Ls.