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Over the next few weeks investors will be focused on how best to make their retirement savings grow. The solution for many will once again revolve around plowing their annual contribution into high-cost, underachieving mutual funds, which have been the go-to investment vehicle for Canadians for years.

It’s a tough cycle to break, but one that investors should consider in favour of many other more attractive opportunities if they want to make the most of their investments.

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We’re all creatures of habit, but mutual funds are mostly inferior mouse traps

“There is just something off-putting about change and I think a lot of investors feel the same way,” said John DeGoey, associate portfolio manager at Burgeonvest Bick Securities Ltd. in Toronto. “We’re all creatures of habit, but mutual funds are mostly inferior mouse traps. There are better options out there.”

It’s not that mutual funds are all bad. For decades, they were one of the best, if not the only way for investors to access stocks and bonds and build professionally-managed portfolios that were liquid, transparent and well-diversified. In many ways, mutual funds revolutionized the investing industry by bringing capital markets to the masses in a relatively cheap and easy manner.