One of the most basic distinctions between mutual funds is whether the fund manager employs an active or a passive management approach. An active management style means the fund manager uses analytic or forecasting tools to select individual stocks for the fund portfolio. In a passive approach, the fund manager simply buys whatever stocks are represented by a well-known market index. Funds that attempt to match exactly the day-to-day fluctuations of a market index are known a
Like a closet that isn't reorganized from time to time, a portfolio that isn't reviewed regularly can leave you feeling like the pieces no longer fit. Last year, for example, stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 had annualized returns of 13.69%.1 U.S. investment grade bonds gained 5.97%, while international stocks declined -4.49%.1 Given this diverse composite of returns, a portfolio than began 2014 carefully allocated between stocks and bonds could now have shifted away from y