Last night cnbc had an investment education special on the tube featuring Peter Lynch of Fidelity Magellan fame. I never realized it before, how much, Peter Lynch looks like the late Andy Warhol. The resemblance is really uncanny. All Lynch would have to do is mess his hair up a little bit and he could get in an Andy Warhol look a like contest.
Lynch advised people to know and research the compnies whose stocks they own as individual investors, but, not to worry about the individual stocks contained in their mutual funds. According to Lynch all you need to know about mutual funds is the general type of fund your invested in i.e. growth, balanced etc. To me this is really self serving bullshit on Lynchs' part. Particularly, after he had just got done talking about how certain sectors of the economy are getting hammered, and, telling people that they shouldn't buy anything that couldn't be read by an 11 year old.
Lynch, if he wasn't, a big bullshitter could have talked about front-loads, back-loads, fees and charges by mutual funds and providers of 401(k) mutual funds. Or he could have gone into the fact that 401(k) mutual funds are not guaranteed by the federal government nor are any other mutual funds for that matter.
I'm not talking about financial planner or insurance salesman bullshit here, " the my fund or policy is better than your fund or policy" type of rap. Just the facts. No editorializing.
Sincerely, Tom