Chapter 1. Evaluating Your Investment Situation

For many investors today, mutual funds are a fact of life. According to industry data, some 93 million individuals in 55 million U.S. households owned mutual funds in 2001. Because one out of three people in this country own mutual funds, they clearly are of importance to many.[1]

Approximately 52 percent of all U.S. households are now invested in mutual funds, and the number of households owning mutual funds has been increasing, not decreasing.

Figure 1-1 shows that only 4.6 million households owned mutual funds in 1980, but by 1988 this number had grown to more than 22 million, and by 1998 it had doubled to 44 million households. As shown in Figure 1-1, the number of households owning mutual funds ...

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