REITs Hold Their Ground

OK, now real estate fund returns are getting downright ridiculous.

The average real estate investment trust mutual fund is up 5% over the past month and 11% year to date, according to fund tracker Morningstar. And that comes on top of a three-year run when annual gains have averaged a stunning 32%.

To put this extraordinary performance into perspective, small-cap growth is the second-best-returning fund category in Morningstar's year-to-date rankings, and it has gained only 2% in the past month and 8.5% so far in 2006. And forget about the S&P 500 index. Everybody's favorite big-cap benchmark index is up just under 4% since the start of the year. ...