Since there are approximately 12,000 different mutual funds available for purchase today, it is a good idea to do a mutual fund comparison first before buying, or contact an Investment Advisor to help you figure out which funds are best suited for your needs.

Morningstar is a well know resource for a mutual fund comparison, and was rated #1 Best Mutual Fund Site by Barron’s in 2004. Go to http://www.morningstar.com.

When doing a mutual fund comparison on Morningstar, I look at the performance of the fund verses the S&P 500 over the last 5 years or more. They offer a Star Rating for each fund as well as other valuable tools to make mutual fund comparisons productive. The idea of the Star Rating is to rank how the fund performs compared to other funds in the same investing category. So there is an attempt to

“compare apples to apples” so to speak. Five Stars is the best ranking a fund can get.

I also like to look at Growth of $10,000 in the Total Returns page on this site. Look at the ten year comparisons of the Fund vs. +/- Index/Category. This will tell you by how much this fund is either underperforming or outperforming the category or index it is representing.

There is a universe of information out there for mutual fund comparison research, but I have found this to be the easiest and most accurate and unbiased source available.