No Matter How You Slice Them, Mutual Fund Fees Should Be Lower

The Securities and Exchange Commission last week released its long-awaited mutual fund fee study. In the same breath that it concluded that fees had risen by nearly 20% over the past 20 years, the SEC acknowledged that a different set of assumptions could have resulted in a vastly different conclusion.

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In fact, the fund industry's trade association, the Investment Company Institute, recently released its own study showing that from 1980 to 1998, fund fees declined -- from 2.26% of assets to 1.35% for equity funds, and from 1.54% to 1.09% for bond funds. ...