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Article: The law of averages.(mutual funds)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- July 5, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By definition, not everybody can beat the index. Should fund managers try?
FOR most of the past century, stocks and bonds were only for the rich. Then came mutual funds. These allowed ordinary people to pool their resources with those of other small investors, which gave them access to professional fund managers and allowed them to diversify among different stocks. Mutual funds grew explosively during the 1990s, with total assets in America expanding from $1 trillion in 1990 to $7 trillion in 2000. In Britain, investment in unit trusts, the local equivalent of mutual funds, increased from [pounds sterling]46 billion in 1990 to [pounds sterling]261 billion in ...