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Earlier this year we penned a couple of columns that, more or less, beat up the mutual fund industry. We will add one more now, with a bit of an extension to highlight what’s wrong with the investment industry in general as well as mutual funds. Then we’ll give our friends and former colleagues in the business a break, but until then here are five more things we don’t like about the business.

1. There are simply too many choices.

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There are at least 15,000 mutual funds to choose from in North America. Funds were supposed to make investors’ lives easier, not more complicated. But with so many funds, there are hundreds of funds that just duplicate others. Add it all up and it makes for a confusing mix of choices for investors.

2. Managers charge high fees just to hold cash.

Going into September we read lots of fund literature about how smart managers were moving to cash to protect their investors.

We have big issues with market timing. For one, market timers usually get it wrong, as these cash-holding managers did in September. Two, any manager going to cash is all but saying, “Hey, I am so much smarter than the market.” Um, no, you are not.