No Load Mutual Funds: Boost Your Portfolio's Returns

Investors who exclusively use broadly diversified, no load mutual funds for their stock investments often lose out on opportunities to increase the reward potential of their portfolios. This article looks at two methods investors may use to enhance the performance of their portfolio of diversifed, no load mutual funds.

Diversify, diversify, diversify!

Rebalance your portfolio periodically.

These have become the mantra in the post dot-com era. Stocks, bonds, and cash typically form the major asset classes for constructing portfolios of no load mutual funds. Lot of emphasis rightly gets placed on the percentage of assets allocated to no load mutual funds of different asset classes. However, the division of assets within a particular class does not nearly get the attention it should.

All too often, investors exclusively use broadly diversified, no load mutual funds for their stock investments. Fidelity Magellan Fund (Nasdaq: FMAGX) and Fidelity Contrafund Fund (Nasdaq: FCNTX) are examples of popular Fidelity funds investors commonly use. By following this approach, investors often miss out on opportunities to enhance the reward potential of their portfolios.

In a related article, we have looked at how investors can use sector funds to construct a diversified, no load mutual fund portfolio. In this article, we look at how investors can use sector funds to enhance the performance of their portfolio of diversified, no load mutual funds. Although Fidelity funds are presented as examples, the concepts outlined here can be implemented using sector funds managed by other institutions such as Vanguard or T. Rowe Price.

Sector funds confine their investments to a particular sector of the economy. Fidelity funds managed under the Select Portfolios