Taking a look at the TradeKing Leaderboard for the past six months, it's clear that some traders have found ways to make money this year despite a horrendous investment environment. During that time period, Lamp is up 556%, shortseller is up 507%, Uranium Pinto Beans is up 261%, mpc220 is up 235% and snowman is up 231%. So it was a bit shocking to see an article in Business Week pointing out that -- out of the 11,585 U.S. and international stock mutual funds tracked by Morningstar -- 11,584 have lost money in 2008 (according to fund data through November 20).That's right, ladies and gentlemen, every single stock mutual fund except one has lost money in 2008. While many mutual funds have difficulty beating the market or outperforming a particular benchmark each year, the fact that only one mutual fund managed to eke out a non-negative return is truly a once-in-a-lifetime type of event:

"Annette Larson, who is Morningstar’s chief data cruncher, has worked at the Chicago firm since 1994. “I’ve never seen it this bad before,” she says. In fact, she was certain she made a mistake when she analyzed the most recent mutual fund data. “I thought to myself: ‘This cannot be right,’ so I did it again, and again, and then I realized all but one fund is negative. I’m in awe,” Larson says."

Compared to the average mutual fund, an individual brokerage account has a lot more flexibility. Many of the individuals on the TradeKing Leaderboard are trading options, for example. Still, that's no excuse for the abysmal performance of U.S. mutual fund managers thus far in 2008. Absolute performance should be the benchmark, not relative performance.

[image: TradeKing Leaderboard]

and so is born the Tradeking Community Mutual Fund (stock symbol: pending)


One does have to take into consideration there are many things a mutual fund cannot do in the smae manner or as quickly as an individual trader can, but there are also things MF's can do that we can't. We are definitely in a market environment of historical proportions.

One advantage small investors have over the big guys is that it is easer to move around 100-1,000 stocks compared to 100,000-500,000 shares or so I have been told. In addition it is easier to make money and loose money the more you have. Lastly many funds have rules that keep them away from many high risk stocks.

I posted this before but obviously by all the losing traders here and I need to post it agian. We are in a bear market and this is when we will be in a bull market. When the 50 and the 20 week moving averages cross and have a 1% divergence. Meaning when the 20 week moves above the 50 week by 1%. This system has worked for over 100 years and you can turn off all the TV's stop reading newspapers and going over earnings statements and balance sheets. That is right just invest in an ETF when the market is going up and a short ETF when the market is going down.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2008/03/30.html

Wow pretty interesting.. Great post. It just goes to show you that most mutual fund managers are more salesman and old school traders. When they make money, they get complacent, its not their money, so why do any macroeconomic research ? I love when they say, past performance is not indicative of future performance.. if they would only P what the P.

:)

RLTromble post.. Who says you have to have money in the market? All they had to do is sit on cash at the right time and they would have kept their positive return!!

What was the one mutual fund that was positive and what are they doing? 

I didn't say they had to have all thier cash in the market, Cramer for an example would usally keep money out of the market and sometimes pull it out. But money not invested, is also money not working or in the case of a bear, lost .