Where To Find A Mutual Fund Expense Ratio

It’s been shown time and time again that of all a mutual fund’s attributes, its mutual fund expense ratio is by far the best predictor of future performance.  Put simply, investment costs matter.  All else being equal, the mutual fund with the lowest fund expense ratio will tend to be the highest-performing in its peer group over long periods of time.

Since the aggregate return of all investors is the market’s return minus investment expenses and the vast majority of mutual funds don’t beat the market in the long run, it makes intuitive sense that the surest way to maximize your return on investment is to minimize your expenses, represented by the all-important mutual fund expense ratio.  Transaction costs, taxes, and other concerns count too, of course, but the fund’s expense ratio is by far the largest expense (and in a tax-deferred account such as a 401k or IRA, taxes are non-existent).  Above all, it’s important to know how much you are being charged to own a specific fund.  Only then can you make an intelligent purchasing decision.

Where To Find Mutual Fund Expense Ratio Data?

It used to be that you had to search through mountains of paperwork (called a fund prospectus) or head down to the public library to determine just how much you were paying for the privilege of having a professional manage your money.  The internet has changed all that.   There are plenty of sites out there with mutual fund data. Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, MSN Finance, all are great resources for investors.  There’s one site I think stands head and shoulders above the rest, however:  Morningstar.

I like Morningstar not simply because it’s a one-stop, easy-to-use resource to find out pretty much anything you’d ever need to know about almost any mutual fund in existence (expense ratios, past returns, risk measurements, analyst opinions, etc) but because Morningstar shares my investment philosophy.  While Yahoo Finance and MSN Finance publish articles with conflicting advice from so-called experts advocating everything from market timing to short-term trading to out-right speculation, Morningstar consistently advocates a long-term, balanced, low-cost approach to investing that jives with my own outlook.  Their penchant for recommending actively-managed funds is not surprising considering they make their money offering investment advice  to the masses, but at least they stress the importance of buying the lowest-cost, most broadly-diversified actively-managed funds, which is more than I can say for most other financial media outlets.

While you can get mutual fund expense ratio data from Morningstar without registering, I highly recommend you sign up for a free Morningstar account to gain access to a wide variety of articles on personal finance and investing topics.  It’s a great free resource to broaden yourinvestment knowledge without being constantly sold to.