A t a friend’s birthday party recently, the conversation around the kitchen table turned to our RRSPs and the baskets of mutual funds they held. My friends lamented the declines in their portfolios, but were irked more by the management fees they were paying for the privilege of owning their shrinking investments. Studies have shown that Canadians pay among the highest management expense ratios (MERs) in the world, with fees for equity mutual funds at 2.5 per cent on average.

T his is the fourth in a series of 10 excerpts from Investing for Canadians for Dummies. When you select a mutual fund, you can use a number of simple, commonsense criteria to greatly increase your chances of investment success. For any particular type of mutual fund (larger-company, Canadian stock funds, for example), hundreds of choices are available

L ou I have been considering investing in Toromont Ind. now that they have acquired Enerflex. Just wondering what your take on them is?

Investors are ignoring mid-cap stocks at their own peril, according to Thyra Zerhusen, manager of the $1.3 billion Aston/Optimum Mid Cap Fund (CHTTX) from Aston Asset Management. “Mid-cap stocks, in general, have done better than large and small cap, and it’s silly the way they are getting ignored,” she said. The fund’s portfolio of just 40 stocks benefited from the market’s downturn a year ago when Ms

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has retreated even further from the life settlements arena, shutting down Longmore Capital, its life settlements provider, according to reports. The move essentially marks Goldman Sachs’s full exit from the secondary life settlements market, said Michael DuVally, a spokesman for the firm

Rumors have been flying of late that Fidelity Investments may be looking to expand its proprietary exchange-traded-fund lineup. Now sources say the firm has been ramping up talks with index providers and other partners to do just that.

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