Mutual funds made one hot mess out of August.
On Aug. 10, Fidelity Investments conducted stock splits on some of its biggest funds, cutting their per-share prices by a factor of 10 while giving investors 10 times as many shares — a gesture that leaves shareholders exactly where they were before. On Aug. 22, Harbor Capital Advisors, which runs the $20 billion Harbor International Fund, announced it would pay out between 35% and 42% of the fund’s net asset value as capital gains — handing many of its investors a giant tax bill. And on Aug. 27, the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed $98 million in sanctions on several firms involved in the Transamerica Tactical Income Fund, alleging that they didn’t properly test that the fund’s strategy would work before launching it….
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This article was originally published on The Wall Street Journal.
Further reading
Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor
Jason Zweig, The Devil’s Financial Dictionary
Jason Zweig, Your Money and Your Brain
Jason Zweig, The Little Book of Safe Money
Jeffrey Ptak, “Another Lesson on Why Taxable Money in Active Stocks is a Bad Idea” (Morningstar)
Paul Sonkin and Paul Johnson, “Quant Fund Managed by a Recent MBA…” (Pitch the Perfect Investment blog)