Conference nyoss1::market_investing

    Besides .1 and .2, I would also look into Janus and 
    Twentieth Century both offer no-load funds.
    
    Wendy

You might want also to consider the Gabelli Family of Funds.
I don't know how much you're planning to invest but Gabelli
currently has a $1000 minimum investment which will be going 
up to $25000 on July 1, 1992.  $25K per fund is a bit steep 
for me, but I plan to open a couple of fund accounts at $1K 
while I can.

Gabelli & Company @ 1-800-GABELLI 

Asset Fund
Growth Fund
Small Cap Growth Fund 
and several others to choose from

Tom

    I have not heard of the Gabelli funds. In your opinion, why should I
    consider Gambelli Funds? I have sent for their literature/prospectus.
    I'm sure the literature will be biased toward buying Gabelli. I'm
    looking for something more from a client that will give me an
    indication why Gabelli is better than Janus, or T. Rowe, etc.
    
    Thanks,
    Bob H.
    

	When you shop for fund families, you should also check into their
	management expense ratios, as well as expenses like front and back
	loads, as well as 12(b)-1 fees.

	I believe Gabelli has a rather hefty front-end load, and their 
	performance has not been that great. 

	Among the well-reputed mutual fund families that are completely no-load
	are:

	20th Century
	Janus
	Financial-Invesco
	Scudder
	T. Rowe Price
	Vanguard (not sure if all are no-load)

	As far as I know, all of the above have at least 7-8 funds that cover
	the range of mutual funds (growth, income, international, balanced,
	sector, etc.) I personally have funds in 20th C, Financial, and Scudder
	and find them to be reasonably well managed, with low expenses, and
	decent performance.

    Gabelli Asset is one of the mutual funds that picked by
    Peter Lynch.  Feb. 92 MONEY Magazine had a brief discussion
    of it.  I personally didn't invest the fund.
    
    Wendy

    BTW, Gabelli Asset and Gabelli Growth both are no-load.
    For Gabelli Asset, the 5-year return is 16.6%, which I
    think is pretty good.
    
    Wendy
    

RE:Last few...
	Let's see...what can I tell you about Gabelli Funds?  Not a _WHOLE_ lot.
I currently have an account in their Asset Fund.  I opened it about 2-3 weeks 
ago and so far I'm ahead about 7%; not bad for 3 weeks time but certainly such 
a short time period gives no indication of long term performance.  

	I was attracted to the Gabelli Asset Fund for 2 reasons:

1) Kiplingers Personal Finance Magazine ran an article (2 months ago?) with some
suggested funds with which to build investment portfolios.  There was one 
portfolio for building a retirement nest-egg, one for funding your child's 
education, etc.  Each portfolio consisted of 8 or 10 fund and there was a brief 
description of each recommended fund.  Several of the portfolios included 
Gabelli's Asset Fund.  I don't recall the specific comments about this fund, but
they were very favorable.  The funds were generally intended for the long-term 
investor and were, by the article's own admission, not necessarily among the 
highest fliers which everyone always hears about.

2) The BusinessWeek Mutual Fund Rating Issue (again about 2 months ago) gave the
Gabelli Asset Fund its highest rating: 3 red "up-arrows".  If I had either of 
these articles handy I'd be happy to be more specific about such things as Beta,
5 and 10 year average gain, etc, but all I recall off the top of my head is that
the numbers showed a very healthy history and relatively low (or moderate) risk.
I say relatively low since most of my mutual fund holdings are in aggressive 
growth funds such as Kaufmann and 20th Century Ultra.  

I also received prospecti for the Growth and Small Cap Growth funds but have not
yet invested (I don't have any free money at the moment) but I am considering 
quick-selling this June's ESPP purchase and putting the proceeds in one or the 
other (while the minimum is still $1K).  

Of the 2, I lean toward the Growth.  The Small Cap is a relatively new fund 
(started on October 22, 1991) and I'd like to see some proof of performance 
before investing.  Also, the expense ratio is about 2.25% which is a bit steep.
I don't remember much about the Growth Fund as I read that prospectus a couple 
months back.  

In conclusion, I'm not in a position to strongly recommend any of the Gabelli 
funds because of my limited experience with them, but both Kiplinger's and BW 
thought quite highly of the Asset fund.

Tom

    What I was really asking for in .0 was some opinions on Fidelity and
    Vanguard. Are they considered to be good fund families? (yield, risk,
    reputation, etc.)
     

    re .0, .10
    
    Fidelity tries to have the best service (24-hour phone lines, etc),
    and has an immense variety of funds on offer.  Since they have so
    many, one or two are bound to be winners each year.  Fidelity has
    no-loads and low-loads: the popular funds tend to have the loads.
    I have Cash Reserves (the money-market fund), Magellan and OTC 
    accounts with them; while I'm not putting more money in either due
    to the loads, they've both done well, and Fidelity has been quite
    eager to inform and serve me.
    
    Vanguard tries to compete on price: they tend to have the lowest
    or near to lowest total fees.  My wife has accounts in Index 500
    and the Wellesely Income Funds: the level of service is a bit lower,
    and she's not flooded with mailings and free magazines as I am, but
    the funds are no-load with low fees and no 12-b charges.  They have
    fewer funds than Fidelity (who doesn't?), but there's a good variety
    available.
    
    I also have some money with 20th Century: their fees are low and the
    funds are no-load, but as with Vanguard I don't get a lot of response, 
    and their phone lines only run during working hours in Kansas City,
    which is a bit of a pain.  They also don't have the variety of funds 
    that the other two have, and it's a smaller outfit.
    
    You asked about yield, risk and reputation:  yields and risk would
    vary with the fund picked; reputation for all of them is good;
    if by risk you meant "risk that the fund manager will abscond to Rio",
    then I don't know but suspect that all have very low risk, with 
    Vanguard possibly marginally lower--Vanguard manages a lot of money for
    institutions such as pension funds and so must get checked out pretty
    thoroughly by experts.
    
    			-John Bishop

 
  and..  just in time..  this weekend is Barron's quarterly mutual fund
  special issue..

  _Paul.
 

    
    
    	I talked with aa independent financial advisor last night 
    	about investing my SERP lump sum.  He said, among other 
    	things, that he would obtain his fees from the funds 
    	themselves rather than me.  (I equate this to a travel 
    	agents way of doing business.)
    
    	He indicted that these funds included Magellen, Vanguard (I
    	believe) and a number of others I recognized.
    
    	Does this method negatively impact the quality or performance
    	of the specific funds that he will recommend?  I realize each
    	financial advisor has some vested interest in his selections,
    	etc.
    

    If you invest $1000 and he gets $80, it matters little whether
    the check is written by you or by a fund manager--the loss to
    you is the same.
    
    You can deal directly with Fidelity Magellan for 3%, and Vanguard
    is (all?) no-load.
    
    No doubt your advisor is a conscientious professional.  Nonetheless,
    you should at least wonder whether your advisor will recommend those
    funds which offer him the higher commissions.  You might want to ask
    for details--what is he paid, are the amounts from various funds
    different, what is the fee structure he gets, and so on.
    
    		-John Bishop

re: 168.10

Fidelity's funds tend to be more aggressive and use a fundamental approach.

Vanguard's funds are moving more in the direction of a quantirative analysis 
approach, however, they still do other approaches.

Fidelity charges a load on many of its funds. Vanguard is no-load except for a 
small fee on its index funds (apparently a standard industry practice).

T. Rowe Price is pure no load.

Scudder and Financial do not have telephone redemption to address of record, 
only to a bank account.

re: 168.13
    
>He said, among other 
>    	things, that he would obtain his fees from the funds 
>    	themselves rather than me.  (I equate this to a travel 
>    	agents way of doing business.)

Whoa! THat means he is ONLY pointing you to load funds.
Beware of such an advisor!
    
>    	He indicted that these funds included Magellen, Vanguard (I
>    	believe) and a number of others I recognized.

Vanguard has no fees for him to get.

    
    Here's the rank of top 8 fund family by Mutual Fund Investing:
    
    Group				Service Rating
    ------				--------------
    
    1. Founders Asset management	4.480
    2. Vanguard Group			4.450
    3. Benham Capital management	4.279
    4. T.Rowe.Price Associates		4.219
    5. Financial Programs, Inc.		4.171
    6. Twentieth Century Investors	4.065
    7. Fidelty Mgt & Research		4.062
    8. Scudder, Stevens & Clark		4.009
    
    Following list recv'd below average service rating:
    
    Shearson Lehman Hutton
    Dean Witter Reynolds,
    American Capital
    Keystone Massachusetts Inc.
    Prudential Bache Securities
    Aim Management Group
    Eaton Vance Corp
    John Hancock 
    First Investment Management
    National Securities Group
    
    
    My .02
    Michael...
          

RE: .17
	Michael,
Could you explain what the "Service Rating" means?  Is this
a measure of the performance of the funds under management
or a rating of how responsive the companies are to customers?

Thanks,

Tom

    
    
    From the article I read, Mutual Fund Forcast, there's no formal
    definition for it. However, from the context, I interprete it as
    the overall service/responsiveness from the vendor.
    
    Those fund family although is not super darling with 80%-100%
    perfromance increase per year, but they are quite persistent
    over the long run, which is the primary purpose for most
    investor.
    
    As you may know, the performance of individual fund within fund
    family also vary differntly.
    
    For my own preference, I'm currently in Vanguard, Fidelty, Janus.
    
    Michael..