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Article: Just what the patient ordered.(financial advice on mutual funds)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 18, 1997
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 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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COMPARED with most financial concepts, tax-exempt mutual funds seem fairly uncomplicated. They are mutual funds that invest in bonds exempt from America's income tax, such as those issued by local governments. That is not exactly brain surgery. Yet the managers of such funds appear to find this definition hard to understand. Last year, many of them chose to invest a portion of their clients' money in instruments that were subject to (you guessed) income tax. Why did they do it? For their customers-of course.
They were not alone. Managers of mutual funds (known as unit trusts in Britain) frequently choose to abandon their stated objectives in the scramble for higher ...