Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
These one-year and YTD rankings are mostly meaningless. We all talk about being investors and professing to have long-term goals. We talk about creating an allocation that should meet our long-term goals, risk tolerance, and income needs. Then the entertainment industry continually comes out with these lists of short-term fund results, which does just the opposite of what we should be doing, and focuses us on short-term numbers. Yes, it is maybe useful to know what sectors might be better than others, especially if we use a tactical overlay for our asset allocation, where we might overweight an asset class or use a sector fund. The U.S. News list is somehow a combination of several others (awarding points based on rankings) and the results are really higgledy-piggledy. These lists can cause investors to carelessly sell a fund that does not end in the top group, or even worse, doesn't appear on the list at all. And several that we track are not on their list.
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