When purchasing mutual funds don’t let the covers direct you.
Scenario: You’re standing in line at the grocery store or you’re at the bookstore and there it is in big bold letters – “THE BEST FUNDS TO INVEST IN NOW!!“. You buy the magazine and read a bit about the top performing funds and then you go buy them or sell what mutual funds you have and buy the ones recommended in the magazine. Hey, why not, if this popular magazine is recommending it, it’s good enough for me. You’re “Chasing the Covers”.
While that move might be best for you, it probably isn’t. You might have the personality that drives you to be in “THE BEST FUNDS NOW!!” all the time. So you end up chasing the so called “BEST FUNDS“. You could do this over and over as you see the different money magazines recommending the best funds to buy right now.
Besides driving yourself crazy, you end up driving up fees, trading in and out of the “best funds”. A good rule of thumb to use is, if you’re in funds that are in the top 25% of the “best funds”, then that’s okay. What you’re going for with mutual funds is consistent, long-term returns. What you don’t want to be doing is trying to be in the top 3, 5, 10 or 15 funds all the time.
This is like day/week/month trading your mutual funds. I watched someone do this years ago and it’s just not right. This person thought they were getting the best returns of the day and beating everyone else based on the news of the day. Not true.
Use the financial magazines to learn more about saving money, investing money, best places to retire, opinions on stocks, bond, ETFs and more. Financial magazines are great to keep up on the latest financial new but not good to use as investment advice on what you should and shouldn’t be investing in right now.
Here are some of the latest financial news magazines to help you keep up on the latest saving and investing news.