10 Telling Fund Stats

1.90%
That's what  AXP Global Technology , which had turnover of 349%, paid in brokerage commissions for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2004. Those costs are greater than its A-share expense ratio of 1.80%. In fact, if you combine those commissions with the expenses, it's clear why management has a pretty tough task ahead of it.

0.85%
This is what  Brandywine paid in brokerage costs during its last fiscal year. Admittedly, that isn't cheap, and the fund's 247% turnover is much lower than the AXP fund's. However, you have to think that the Brandywine folks are doing a better job at managing these costs.

$150 million
Mario Gabelli has a beneficial ownership stake (defined as personal assets plus his representative holdings through  Gabelli Asset Management and Gabelli Partners--for which he is the majority owner) of $150 million invested in the seven offerings that he manages directly. This is a considerable amount to put beside that of shareholders, but it's worth noting that nearly 90% of that sum is devoted to conservative, cash-laden  Gabelli ABC . At last count, that fund had more than 70% of its assets in cash.

Two
While the weightings may differ slightly among a few holdings, the top 20 positions of the  Dreyfus Fund contain only two stocks that don't appear in the top 20 of the S&P 500. Fear not, though, those two "outliers" do happen to appear in the index's top 25. So why should investors buy this fund over an index offering? Beats me.

$80 million
As part of its settlement with the SEC, Edward Jones recently divulged that it received more than $80 million through revenue-sharing arrangements from January through November 2004. (In revenue-sharing arrangements, a broker is paid for selling mutual fund shares by the funds' investment advisor or the funds' distributor. Edward Jones thus derives sales-based fees and asset-based fees. For instance, a distributor or advisor may pay Edward Jones a fee for each share of the fund that Edward Jones sells. This is referred to as a sales-based fee and is based on the dollar value of the purchase. With asset-based fees, some fund distributors or advisors pay Edward Jones a fee based on the value of assets under management. This generally means that each year a client maintains holdings in a preferred mutual fund, Edward Jones is paid by the fund company advisor or distributor.)

The firm says that it doesn't consider revenue-sharing payments exclusively in determining which fund families are "preferred", but none of the "nonpreferred" families have paid the firm anything. And in the SEC litigation release stipulating the terms of the settlement, it's revealed that during 2003 alone the revenue sharing received by Edward Jones was equivalent to 33% of the net income of Edward Jones' parent holding company, Jones Financial. Further, 95%-98% of Edward Jones' sales of mutual fund shares have been sales of the "preferred" families.

1.33% and 0.97%
The seven-day yield on the AllianceBernstein Capital Reserves, a money market offering with $11 billion in assets, is 1.33%. The fund's net expense ratio is 0.97%. The fund is one of the most successful "private label" money market products around. In other words, several brokerages employ this Alliance fund as the "sweep" account into which they push cash hanging around in your brokerage account. The advantage to the brokerage firm, of course, is that they get a nice cut from Alliance, and since it's part of the sweep, a lot of people don't pay any attention to how much it charges or what it's earning. In fact, sweep funds have historically been a great deal for the folks managing them, but rarely for investors.

0.49%
This is the "management fee" on  Evergreen Asset Allocation . For those who haven't been following it, this is a pretty interesting fund managed by the folks at GMO. The problem is that the 49 basis points is paid to Evergreen, which does little managing of the fund. In fact, the offering is a fund of GMO funds, with the mix set by GMO. (GMO is paid via the expense ratios on the underlying funds.) And prior to the adoption of this fund by Evergreen, GMO charged nothing more than the modest expenses on the underlying funds.

29
Out of 344, that's the number of large-growth funds that had posted gains for the trailing five-year period through Dec. 31, 2004. On average, those 344 funds have lost 7% annually during that stretch.

848 and 723
Out of 853 taxable bond funds with five-year records, 848 gave posted gains for the same five-year period. On average, those 853 funds have returned 6.6% annually. Out of 723 municipal-bond funds with five-year records, all 723 have posted gains over that five-year stretch. On average, those 723 funds have returned 6.2% annually.

57 and 88
In 1999, there were 57 funds in our real-estate category. Back then, everybody hated them. Today, there are 88 funds in our real-estate category, and everyone loves them. Seems like a pretty good contrarian indicator to me.