3) But what if one were to invest in, oh, I dunno, perhaps the
Munder Small CapWell, I'll be damned. 12.5% return,
and it beat the S&P 500 in what would be considered a short-term hold.
Justin, I do believe you could screw up a wet dream.
First, I never said you advocated investing in Magellan. Show me a post where I said you wrote that. I picked Magellan because it is the largest, best known fund and one that was touted by the pros.
More to the point here, 12.5% on the Munder Small cap sounds pretty good. And it did beat the S&P 500. Unfortunately (for you) that 12.5% is for 2006 only, as your own data show. Can you read a bar chart?
Further, you have to compare a fund to its benchmark, not necessarily the S&P 500. In this case the Munder Fund's benchmark is not S&P 500 but the Russell 2000 Value. Had you bothered to read Munder's site you would have seen this. You also would have seen that they admit they failed to beat the benchmark, even during the limited duration of 2006 (which isnt half over).
See here:http://www.munder.com/funds/commentarydetail/0,1319,MS0yNC0xLTEtMS00,00.html
Further, if you had bought the iShares Russell 2000 Value (an index fund) you would have been up 14.14% for YTD. And the iShares have an expense ratio of .2% while Munder seems to charge over 5% for an upfront fee and I couldnt find their expense ratio otherwise, but I'll bet it is more than .2%.
You complain I dont name any books. I have done so in plenty of posts. But just to recap:
-Rich Dad/Poor Dad. An easy book to start with
-A Random Walk Down Wall St. A good book although I dont agree with what he says
-The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham, Warren Buffett's teacher and a classic book
-What Works on Wall St. A very good book if you skip the real technical parts. I learned a lot here.
-Any book on Warren Buffett, the most succesful investor in history.
-12 Mistakes You Have To Avoid, by Jonathan Clements (I might have the title wrong). A very good book by a WSJ columnist.
-The WAll St Journal. Every day. Esp Jonathan Clements' columns
-The Economist
And i am sure there are plenty of others. Some are good, some suck. But you can learn something from all of them.