Expert Advice

Mutual Funds Advertise Winners Not Losers

Rebalance Investment Committee member Jay Vivian on how mutual fund company ads that promote their investment prowess are often very misleading.

Jay Vivian: When you think about all the ads that you see and all the media about various money managers beating their benchmarks and doing well and so on. I guess the thing that I would ask you is why do you suppose they’re advertising those particular products?

And the answer often is that it’s because those are the products that happen to have done well. You rarely see an advertisement that says, “We’re great. But, by the way, here are the half of our funds that are not Morningstar four and five rated. We’re great, but here’s the one that we just fired the manager of because he did a lousy job. We’re great, but here’s the one we just closed because all the clients just moved from it and left from it.”

So yeah, when you see the ads for the guys that are beating the benchmark and the gals that are beating their benchmarks, yeah, there are people that beat the benchmarks. But that’s why they’re advertising them. And next week they’ll be advertising the ones that are beating the benchmark next week and next year and next month. So I wouldn’t hold too much sway in the ones that are advertising that they’ve beaten benchmark for this period.