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Article: Up and up until it popped. (growth of US mutual funds)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 14, 1993
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 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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IT IS the financial equivalent of the Gadarene swine: money is surging into America's mutual funds. In the first six months of 1993 net purchases of bond and equity mutual funds totalled $130 billion, about two-thirds as much as in all of 1992. At the end of June investors could choose between 4,224 funds, up from about 3,000 three years ago and 2,000 in 1987. There are now nearly twice as many funds as there are shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). And the Wall Street Journal devotes 15% more space to the prices of funds than it does to individual stocks.
Mutual-fund assets--$1.8 trillion at the end of June--have grown almost as large as ...