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dascolitrailer
Jun 28, 2009, 10:23 AM
I received an assignment to write a critical analysis of a mutual fund. He told us to begin the paper with a brief intro to the mutual fund. He gave us a summary of the paper he used for another class that had to do it on a bond not a MF. This may be what's messing me up but I still don't understand what he says we should begin it with. Here's what he gave us:
"You will want to begin your analysis with a brief introduction to your fund e.g. it is a high yield bond fund that invests XX% in bonds rated less than BBB." if anyone could help me out with what the XX% should be and what the BBB rating means it would really help me out!
Thank you so much
Dascolitrailer

Fugue
Jun 28, 2009, 11:00 AM
I think what's tripping you up is that bonds are given a credit rating (e.g. BBB), while stocks are not. Since a bond fund is going to invest in several different bonds with presumably different credit ratings, his suggestion for the bond paper is to indicate the percentage of the fund that's made up bonds below a certain rating.

If these are the only instructions you received and you don't have time to get clarification, I think I would choose a (different) way to summarize your stock fund. For example, you could indicate the percentage of the fund made up of large cap value stocks (or whatever). Or you could indicate the sector breakdown, as in "12% of this mutual fund is invested in the financial sector."

The way your instructor worded the instructions leads me to believe it doesn't matter so much what you choose to summarize, just that you pick an aspect of your fund and use that information to classify it somehow.

Hope this helps.