Top 6 Advantages of Investing in Mutual Funds

How Investing in Mutual Funds Can Be Beneficial for You

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Investing in mutual funds can be a smart move for almost any kind of investor. Beginning investors and professional money managers, and every experience degree of investor in between, can take advantage of the features and benefits of mutual funds and apply them to their investment objectives.

There are many qualities of mutual funds to learn but fortunately investing in them is much easier than making a list of the advantages! With that said, and in no particular order, here are six advantages of investing in mutual funds.

1. Investing in Mutual Funds Is Easy

Putting together a portfolio of stocks and bonds can be difficult, if not impossible, for the average investor. For example, the time and knowledge required to research and analyze a dozen or more stocks can be too challenging for most people. That's not to mention all the trades needed to build the portfolio, plus the ongoing research and analysis required to maintain the portfolio. But when it comes to investing in mutual funds, investors can get started investing with just one mutual fund.

Once you know your investment objective, which will include the number of years to invest and how much risk you're willing to take, you can choose the best mutual fund or funds for you. And depending upon the types of mutual funds you use, the ongoing maintenance required may be little to nothing.

2. Mutual Funds Offer Professional Management

One of the primary reasons investing mutual funds is easy is because they're professionally managed. Rather than researching, analyzing, buying and selling stocks or bonds yourself, you have a skilled money manager doing it for you. Professional management is at the core of how mutual funds work: When investors buy shares of mutual funds, they're pooling their money together. Managers use this pool of money to buy the stocks or bond securities that end up forming one portfolio.

Think of mutual funds as investment baskets of securities. Each basket has its own objective and manager (or management team). The manager also has a team of analysts that assist in doing the research. Also keep in mind that, when it comes to management, mutual funds fall into two primary categories — one is active management and the other is passive management.

Managers of actively-managed funds will use their resources to try and "beat the market," which is to say that they'll attempt to outperform a certain benchmark, such as the S&P 500 index. However, the manager of a passively-managed mutual fund will not try to beat the index but will instead buy and hold a basket of stocks that will replicate the holdings and performance of the index.

3. Mutual Funds Are Diversified Investments

The nature of mutual funds as pooled investments that are professionally managed means that investors generally can easily accomplish one of the most important standards of smart investing — diversification. To diversify means to spread market risk by holding a variety of several different securities, rather than just a few. Most mutual funds invest in dozens or hundreds of stocks or bonds within one portfolio.

Depending upon the type of fund, this accomplishes the fundamentals of diversification with as little as one or two mutual funds. However, when building a portfolio of mutual funds, especially as investment assets and objectives grow more complex over time, investors are smart to diversify across several funds in different categories.

The reason why diversification is important is that investing in just one or two securities can be too risky. For example, if an investor buys just a few stocks and those stocks see significant declines in price over a short period of time, the investor's portfolio can drop dramatically in value. But if the investor buys a mutual fund that holds 100 stocks, and a few of those stocks see price declines, the impact on the investor's account value is less.

4. Investment Costs Are Low for Mutual Funds

Investors tend to overlook many aspects of building and managing a portfolio, and the most negative impact of those overlooked items often comes from expenses. Depending upon the brokerage firm or investment company, investors may be charged commissions for each purchase or sale of single securities, such as stocks. This can add up to hundreds of dollars per year, per account, depending upon the frequency and size of trades.

However mutual funds can be significantly less expensive. A mutual fund manager will place all the necessary trades to maintain the mutual fund portfolio but the investor may only be responsible for one low expense. But if investors are not careful, investing in mutual funds can be more expensive than buying individual stock securities. To keep costs low, mutual fund investors are wise to buy no-load mutual funds with low expense ratios. Costs can also be minimized by investing with one of the best no-load mutual fund companies like Vanguard, Fidelity or T.

Rowe Price, all of which have a diverse selection of no-load funds with low expense ratios.

5. Investors Can Buy Many Different Types of Mutual Funds

Investment objectives are unique to every investor, which means that there are many different reasons to buy mutual funds. Fortunately, there are several categories of funds that can suit any investment need. Some of the most common investment objectives include retirement and education, each of which may require different funds to suit the needs of the investor.

Target retirement funds are good examples of low-cost, diversified funds tailored to meet a variety of time horizons. This category of funds will invest in other mutual funds that combine to be suitable for a certain age range of investor. Target retirement funds are categorized by decade. For example, a 25-year old investor may expect to retire in 35 to 45 years. Therefore a fund like Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 () can work well in a 401(k) or IRA for this investor.

Retirement is generally considered a long-term investment objective. But there are mutual fund types, such as money market funds or bond funds, that are suitable for most short-term needs. Investors may also combine types of funds to tailor more specific investment objectives.

6. Mutual Funds Are Versatile Enough to be Used By All Types of Investors

All of the advantages of mutual funds mentioned in this article combine into one advantage of flexibility. They're simple enough to be understood and used by beginners but versatile enough to be used by professional money managers, who often use them to build portfolios for clients.

A beginning investor may buy their first mutual fund to start saving for retirement, while a large investment firm might use the same mutual fund in a portfolio of funds for a major client, such as a wealthy trust client or an endowment fund used by a major university or non-profit organization.

There's no doubt that mutual funds are here to stay for many more years and decades to come. With trillions of dollars invested in mutual funds in the U.S. alone, and popularity increasing in emerging markets like India, there's no reason to expect this versatile investment type will do anything but gain in popularity in the future.
