Assets Crest Record $10 Trillion Mark
Exchange-traded funds may be grabbing most of the headlines these days, but mutual funds are still pulling in the big bucks.
The U.S. mutual fund industry crossed the $10 trillion threshold for the first time in October, when the combined assets of the nation's open-end funds rose by $286.6 billion, or 2.9%, to $10.013 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute, a Washington, D.C., trade group. The data include assets in stock funds, hybrid funds, long-term bond funds and money market funds. By comparison, ETF assets rose 9.4% to $383.3 billion in October from $350.3 billion in September, according to ICI. (Mutual funds themselves are big investors in ETFs, but the ICI strips out these holdings to avoid double-counting assets.) The mutual fund industry has come a long way since the beginning of the decade, when the combination of the dot-com bust and a trading scandal prompted some investors to switch to ETFs. In 2002, mutual fund assets fell for the first time in 19 years to $6.3 billion from $6.9 billion in 2001. (ICI spokesman Edward Giltenan says stock-market declines were largely responsible for the drop, as investors added $120 billion more to mutual funds than they withdrew that year.) ETFs, which are baskets of stocks or other securities that trade throughout the day on an exchange, certainly have a lot of advantages, including lower management fees and tax efficiency. They're also largely immune to market timing and late-trading abuses. However, the mutual fund industry has demonstrated its staying power.- Loading Comments...
- Loading Comments...
Featured Photo Galleries
| Dow Jones | S&P 500 | NASDAQ | 10-Year Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,270.47 | 1,093.48 | 2,167.88 | 34.29 |
Oil *
75.55
|
|
UP
73.00
|
UP
6.24
|
UP
18.86
|
DOWN
0.17
|
10 Yr
3.43%
SPDR Gold
109.74
|
|
+0.72%
|
+0.57%
|
+0.88%
|
-0.49%
|
Data delayed 20 minutes |














