It has since become the leading authority outside the U.S. in fund expense ratios — the fees and charges that are levied by mutual fund operators on their shareholders.
Just showing fund expense ratios (the fee, measured as a percentage of assets, the funds charge to manage the money) is not enough: Many fees are often buried in a prospectus that most employees don't take the time to read.
Mutual Funds (excluding Index funds) may have higher expense fees because they require managers who actively oversee the mix of perhaps one hundred or more stocks or other securities that comprise the fund.
At first glance Eaton Vance Greater China Growth Fund's one-year return of 54% might very well be worth the fund's extravagant expense fee of $3.07 for every $100 in assets.
In recent weeks, the Your Money columnist Ron Lieber has written often about the impact of mutual fund expenses and other fees on the performance of 401(k) plans and the difficulty of determining just how much one is paying in expenses.
Care a lot about the dollars that get frittered away in trading fees, taxes and fund expense ratios.
But Schwab extracts undisclosed fees from the fund vendors for acting as middleman, and these fees necessarily put upward pressure on fund expense ratios.
4) You aren't being hit with high fees, because while the average fund expense ratio is about 2%, this one charges only a third of a percent.
The fund expense is 0.68%.
To be sure, the hidden costs of the hobby are often steeper than brokerage fees or fund expenses.
