Mutual Funds: Standardized Net of Cost List of Transparent and Opaque Fees and Expenses

Abstract

This study provides mutual fund shareholders with a normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses designed for most all funds. The most likely next step, if any, would be for a few stewardship funds to adopt the normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses and attach to each its percentage cost to total net assets, if any. This analysis is needed, for one reason, because a large percentage of individual investors, especially those with low financial literacy, are unaware of the existence of traditionally opaque fund fees and expenses, no less their percentage costs. The first goal is for each mutual fund to adopt the normative listing of transparent and opaque fees and expenses. The second goal is for each adopting fund to disclose the percentage cost (if any) for each item in the normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses. General fund adoption of these two goals facilitates the third goal -- for each adopting fund Investors may then access the cost percentages, if any, for each of the normative transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses.Only a few individual mutual fund fees and expenses in the normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses are transparent -- the expense ratio, management fees, 12b-1 fees, and other expenses, and their components are traditionally opaque. While the overwhelming majority of fees and expenses and components are traditionally opaque, it is obvious individual fund investors would benefit greatly from knowing the percentage cost of each of the many items in the normative listing of transparent and traditionally opaque fees and expenses.