| The Top Ten List: Part 3 |
Dateline: 12/07/98
Last time we ran the Top Ten artcle I included a quizlet asking your preference for the next list. Mutual Funds won hands down, so this week - the Top Ten Mutual Fund sites. There are a heck of a lot of them, so it's not an easy choice. I am leaving the websites of individual mutual funds out of consideration here as there are over fifty of them, many of them with much to recommend them, but too many for me to wade through. You'll find them listed in my Mutual Fund Net Links. Maybe in the future I'll do a Top Ten List focusing just on Company sites.
What I'm going for in my selections here are sites that provide useful information for the reader. Most of them come from my Megasite list, but not all. I've included some sites because of uniquely useful information available there.
Now I usually start off by giving you a funny list and then a serious list. This time I'd like to tell you the funniest investment story of the week (an absolutely true one) instead.
On Thursday, Dec. 3, Ticketmaster Online City Search launched its intial public offering. Both ZDNet and Reuters reported on the pending IPO, and both mis-spelled the ticker symbol - TMCO instead of TMCS. Well, you know the euphoria Internet stocks are creating. Seems the inadvertent mention of their stock symbol did wonders for a small Manhattan office cleaning company called Temco Service Industries. Their stock shot up from $23 to an all-time high of $65. The stock settled back down to $31 in the afternoon when investors realized their mistake. I'm sure there's a lesson there somewhere! (As reported in Wired)
The Ticketmaster IPO went the way of most (all?) Internet stocks - it quadrupled in early trading from an initial issue price of $14 to $63.38 before settling down and closing at $40.25.
Now on to the list!
1. Canoe Mutual Fund Pages -
Canoe has become almost synonymous with financial information and
its mutual fund centre lives up to the reputation. Includes a six
month archive of Financial Post mutual fund news stories, updates
on name changes, mergers, etc., a generous excerpt from Jonathon
Chevreau's Smart Funds book, daily NAVPS and monthly
performance figures.
2. The Fund Counsel -
The Fund Counsel are two economists, Levi Folk and Richard Webb,
who apply their expertise to analysing Canadian mutual funds.
They publish a pricey newsletter, a sample of which is available
for download. Site features an extensive selection of current and
past articles on mutual funds, but the unique tool that makes
this site especially worthwhile is their Fund Counsel Quotient™, a superb risk
analysis method.
3. The
Fund Library- The Fund Library is one of the most
comprehensive Canadian mutual fund sites on the Internet. It
includes recent news, an extensive collection of articles, an
education centre, lots of links, and my favorite feature - a Fund
Filter. One excellent feature is that clicking on the name of a
particular fund gives you a pop-up window containing a wealth of
information, including Annual Compound and annualized returns, a
brochure in PDF format, and a variety of opinions on the fund
from Gordon Pape and other mutual fund analysts. It is also the
only site that gives two year performance info on funds covered.
Most supply one, three and five year info.
4. FundMonitor.com- This is
mutual fund analyst Duff Young's site. It includes his articles
for the Globe & Mail, a listing of his upcoming seminars, a
discussion forum and most importantly, his research pages where
you can get Duff's unique profile on every fund.. Gives such
information as the largest drop in a fund's history and the
length of time to recover and a fund's year to year quartile
performance. Includes a vastly overpriced subscription service as
well. Stick to the free stuff!
5. Globefund
- Without a doubt this is one of the best mutual fund sites in
Canada. Contains an extensive archive of articles from the Globe
& Mail and some superb tools, my favorite being the Fund
Filter. Always has current up-to-date news and information on new
funds, name changes and other news from the fund companies. Also
a daily analysis from the Equion Group.
6. InfoFund
- This is the only mutual fund site that tracks both Canadian and
American mutual funds, over 8000 funds altogether. You can build
a portfolio and track its performance with a number of useful
graphical tools.
7. i|money funds centre
- The i|money site is a comprehensive personal finance
site with many other features besides mutual funds. Site includes
an excellent introduction to mutual funds, as well as a glossary.
The best feature here are the tools, particularly the Graphing
tool and the Portfolio Builder The latter lets you include both
stocks and mutual funds in your portfolio. They will send you an
emailed statement of your portfolio's value daily, weekly or
monthly.
8. Mutual Vision -
Mutual Vision, like its better known counterparts BellCharts and
PalTrak, sells mutual fund tracking software that lets you keep
tabs on fund performance. What makes it unique, though, is that
it specializes in tracking funds for the short term - one week,
two weeks, three weeks and four weeks, up to a year. Much of the
information is freely available on the website, unlike its
competitors. Downside is that it doesn't cover as extensive a
collection of funds as the others, but all the major funds are
included.
9. Portfolio
Analytics - Portfolio Analytics is
one of several mutual fund performance tracking services that
sell specialized software (PalTrak) that lets you download and
keep track of Canadian mutual fund performance. Site includes
much free information including profiles on each fund covered as
well as a list of the 25 funds with the highest and lowest
average P/E ratios.
10. Quicken Mutual Fund Centre
- An extensive mutual fund resource, Quicken includes
stock information as well as linking to useful info from other
sources, including the Profit 100 and Bellcharts Top Performers.
BellCharts is another very popular fund performance tracking tool. It didn't make the list because it does much the same as Portfolio Analytic's PalTrak and the site doesn't include as much free stuff. And Mutual Vision, while not covering as extensive a collection of funds, focuses on a particular niche - the short term - that BellCharts doesn't cover.
I also like Southam's Top 25 List which lists the Top 25 funds each month in a variety of different time frames. It is an extremely useful tool - but hey - which one could I drop above? A third useful site is the Toronto Star's Canadian Fund Guide, but it's data is provided by the Fund Library, and is largely a duplication of the info there.
So that's the list. Agree? Disagree? Like to see more Top Ten lists? Leave your comments on our Bulletin Board! For more links see my Mutual Funds Net Links page.