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This page was last updated on January 26, 2001. Articles by Fund Democracy: Archives No Matter How You Slice Them, Mutual Fund Fees Should be Lower, TheStreet.com (Jan. 23, 2001). View the full text of this article. (See related article, What's An Excessive Fee? Courts Leave it to Funds to Decide, TheStreet.com (Jan. 24, 2001)(article abstract)) Abstract: The Securities and Exchange Commission last week released its long-awaited mutual fund fee study. In the same breath that it concluded that fees had risen by nearly 20% over the past 20 years, the SEC acknowledged that a different set of assumptions could have resulted in a vastly different conclusion. Indeed, using assumptions more favorable to the fund industry, the fund industry's trade association, the Investment Company Institute, found that from 1980 to 1998, fund fees declined -- from 2.26% of assets to 1.35% for equity funds, and from 1.54% to 1.09% for bond funds. But one thing the SEC and the industry seem to agree upon is that the economies of scale created by the vast growth in mutual fund assets over the past two decades -- to $7 trillion currently from $134 billion -- often have not been passed on to shareholders. |