Eric Tyson - Mutual Funds For Dummies, 6th edition

Mutual Funds For Dummies

by Eric Tyson, MBA

Mutual Funds For Dummies

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Copyright 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929313

ISBN: 978-0-470-62321-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Eric Tyson, MBA, is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Through his counseling, writing, and teaching, he teaches people to manage their personal finances better and successfully direct their own investments.

He has been involved in the investing markets in many capacities for the past two decades. Eric first invested in mutual funds back in the mid-1970s, when he opened a mutual fund account at Fidelity. With the assistance of Dr. Martin Zweig, a now-famous investment market analyst and frequent guest on PBSs Wall Street Week, Eric won his high schools science fair for a project on what influences the stock market!

Since that time, Eric has (among other things) worked as a management consultant to Fortune 500 financial service firms and earned his bachelors degree in economics at Yale and an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Despite these handicaps to clear thinking, he had the good sense to start his own company, which took an innovative approach to teaching people of all economic means about investing and money.

An accomplished freelance personal finance writer, Eric is the author of the national bestsellers Personal Finance For Dummies and Investing For Dummies and coauthor of Home Buying For Dummies and Taxes For Dummies and was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. His work has been featured and quoted in dozens of national and local publications, including Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Kiplingers Personal Finance Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Bottom Line/Personal, and on NBCs Today Show, ABC, CNBC, PBSs Nightly Business Report, CNN, CBS national radio, Bloomberg Business Radio, and Business Radio Network. Hes also been a featured speaker at a White House conference on retirement planning.

Despite his wealth of financial knowledge, Eric is one of the rest of us. He maintains a large inventory of bumble-bee colored computer books on his desk for those frequent times when his computer makes the (decreasing amount of) hair on his head fall out.

Erics Web site is www.erictyson.com.

Dedication

To my wife, Judy; my family especially my parents, Charles and Paulina; my friends; and to my counseling clients and students of my courses for teaching me how to teach them about managing their finances.

Authors Acknowledgments

Many people contribute to the birth of a book, and this book is no exception. First, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to James Collins, who inspired me when I was a young and impressionable business school student. Jim encouraged me to try to improve some small part of the business world by being an entrepreneur and focusing solely on what customers needed rather than on what made the quickest buck.

The technical reviewer for this edition of the book was Mercer Bullard. He helped to improve each and every chapter, and I am thankful for that.

Thanks to all the good people in the media and other fields who have taken the time to critique and praise my previous writing so that others may know that it exists and is worth reading. And to those too lazy to open the book just because of its bright yellow color and title, I say, Dont judge a book by its cover!

And a final and heartfelt thanks to all the people on the front lines and behind the scenes at Wiley who helped to make this book and my others a success. A big round of applause, please, for Kelly Ewing as project editor and as outstanding copy editor. Special thanks to Mike Baker. Thanks also to the Composition, Graphics, Proofreading, and Indexing staff for their great efforts in producing this book.