False Profits: Fund Gains From '99 Are Long Gone

In the eighth grade, I loomed over almost all my classmates at six feet, but I haven't grown an inch since. I still have to remind myself that I'm not tall -- and investors basking in the glow of their 1999 returns could use a similar reminder.

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Time to Overweight Tech? Think Again

It's natural for folks holding shares of sagging tech and tech-heavy funds to use their funds' eye-popping 1999 gains as a solace when looking at the losses they've suffered since. The instinct is to figure that even if a fund has lost half its value in the last year, that triple-digit gain in 1999 still leaves you in the black. This might be instinctive and it might be comforting, but in many cases, it's also wrong.

Here's why: Most of the money that flowed into these funds showed up after they rocketed north in 1999 and even if you bought shares at the start of that bonny year, the past year's drubbing has left your investment under water. ...