Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice ... Take Control Now and Build Wealth Wisely [Hardcover]

Charles P. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Series: Financial Times (Prentice Hall) | Publication Date: August 23, 2002

In the U.S. alone, more than 55,000,000 households invest in mutual funds--but most of those investors aren't achieving optimal returns, because they don't fully understand their costs, their risks, or their alternatives. In Your Money, Your Choice, a leading investment researcher (and author of one of the world's leading investment textbooks) explains exactly what individual investors must know to make the most of every investment dollar. Simply and clearly--without complicated charts or equations--Charles P. Jones reviews everything investors need to watch out for in order to achieve their objectives--including costs, tax issues, sector volatility, and other key issues. He also introduces and explains important new alternatives to mutual funds, such as folio investing, comparing their advantages, risks, and potential yields.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In the United States alone, more than 55,000,000 households invest in mutual funds—but most of those investors aren't achieving optimal returns, because they don't fully understand their costs, their risks, or their alternatives. In Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice, a leading investment researcher (and author of one of the world's leading investment textbooks) explains exactly what individual investors must know to make the most of every investment dollar.

Simply and clearly—without complicated charts or equations—Charles P. Jones reviews everything investors need to watch out for to achieve their objectives, including costs, tax issues, sector volatility, and other key issues. He also introduces and explains important new alternatives to mutual funds, such as folio investing, comparing their advantages, risks, and potential yields.

You can't afford not to understand the mutual funds you're staking your future on. This book gives you an unvarnished look at both the positives and the negatives. You'll learn what to ask, where to get the answers, and how to act on that information to minimize your risks and maximize your real returns.

* Choosing the right mutual fund

Index funds? Sector funds? Track records? Ratings? Managers? What really matters

* Costs and taxes: Are they killing your returns?

Management costs, taxable distributions: who's really profiting from your investment?

* "Sold, not bought": the mass marketing of mutual funds

Crucial information that gets lost in the marketing hype

* Who's watching out for you?

Today's mutual fund watchdogs: Are they really protecting investors' interests?

* Managed bond funds: a good investment?

Why you should think twice before investing in managed bond funds

* New alternatives to mutual funds

Folios, ETFs, managed accounts: Are they right for you?

What you must know about mutual fund investing right now.

• Mutual fund secrets the marketers won't tell you
• Expert techniques for maximizing return, minimizing taxation, and managing risk
• Hidden costs, taxable distributions, sector volatility, poor investment safeguards, and other crucial issues
• New alternatives to mutual funds: exchange-traded funds, folios, managed accounts, and more
• No equations, no complicated graphs, just simple explanations you can act on

Are you getting the results you expect from your mutual fund investments?

If you're like millions of investors, the answer is NO: your share values are down, you're paying higher taxes than you expected, and the vaunted expertise of your fund managers is proving to be useless-or worse.

It doesn't have to be that way. You can make healthy returns in mutual funds-and you can find alternatives that will help you accomplish your financial objectives when mutual funds won't. This book will show you how.

Charles P. Jones tells you what the mutual fund marketers won't. You'll discover the real risks of mutual funds—and the tough questions you simply must ask if you're going to make the right decisions about them.

You can no longer afford to let the "professionals" make your key decisions for you. Take control of your investments, with the one book that shows you how: Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice.

About the Author

CHARLES P. JONES is Edwin Gill Professor of Finance at North Carolina State University and author of Investments: Analysis and Management, Eighth Edition, one of the world's leading investment textbooks. A Chartered Financial Analyst, Jones's research interests include rates of return on financial assets, asset allocation decisions, and earnings surprises.

More than 50 of Jones's papers have been published in the world's leading journals on finance and investing; he speaks and consults widely on topics of managerial finance, investment, and capital markets. In 1998-99, he was honored with a North Carolina State University Board of Governors Teaching Award, having previously been the recipient of one of the university's Outstanding Teaching Awards.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education; 1st edition (August 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131004425
• ISBN-13: 978-0131004429
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,260,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Money, your choice Mutual Funds, November 23, 2002

By 

Al Boyette (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice ... Take Control Now and Build Wealth Wisely (Hardcover)

I was asked to review an early draft of this book. I'm really glad I did! Like many other people, I'm recently retired, need to stay tuned to the stcok market so that I can keep my "nest egg" wisely invested, but would much rather be outside playing golf, tennis, etc. I want to enjoy every minute of of each day, and the last thing I want to do is study and play the stock market! So, I don't, or at least not nearly as much as I should.

This book was exactly what I needed. I learned a lot more about mutual funds than I had expected to learn and it was written so that I could easily understand it. Subsequently, I'm making changes that will simplify and improve my investment strategies and will allow me to play golf without that little voice in the back of my head telling me that instead, I should be sitting at my desk studying the "market"!

If this all sounds familiar and you can relate to what I'm saying, then read it! You'll be glad you did!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice, November 12, 2002

By 

Edward D. Smith (Beaufort, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice ... Take Control Now and Build Wealth Wisely (Hardcover)

This book is great and I felt that Dr. Jones had written it just for me. He is right, it is my money and my choice to make good investment decisions. After reading the book, I feel like I am ready to avoid the pitfalls and invest in mutual funds. Thank you Dr. Jones for writing a book that even I can understand.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but irritatingly bloated, September 8, 2009

By 

Claudio Di Gregorio "ClauDG" (Argentina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mutual Funds: Your Money, Your Choice ... Take Control Now and Build Wealth Wisely (Hardcover)

I agree with what the other 5 star reviewers said about how useful and easily understandable this book is.
However, I am rating it at 3 stars first to compensate for the unreserved enthusiasm of the others, and also because it is obvious to me that there was a blatant attempt to fleshen the book up, by any means, to reach a number of pages.
Instead of more information -more footnotes, for example- regrettably the method used to attain that goal was the incessant repetition of the same ideas, which is not only fatiguing but also conveys the image of disorder, as identical concepts pop up in supposedly totally different chapters.
Many pictures are unnecessary and most are obvious. At one point, after informing that mutual funds represent 20% of retirement funds, Jones wastes one page displaying two amateurish looking pie charts to show us, dumbass readers, what 20% visually represents.
The titles of some chapters -for instance "Why should I be concerned?", or "Why inverstors can have problems...", or "Be aware of. . ." or "Think carefully. . ." clearly indicate that the contents of all them are going to be about the same subject -warnings- or at least they will overlap greatly. They do.
What was said in this book -again, admittedly very useful for laypersons such as me- could have been said in 100 pages less, should the author avoided his chaotic repetitions.