Mutual Fund Families
Here you will find my personal experience with several mutual fund families. To be clear, this is just my personal experience and in no way should be the basis for your decision whether to invest with these funds or not.
Fidelity: Always having been one of the largest fund families, Fidelity offers many mutual funds. I’ve personally invested in quite a few of these, and they tend to have solid returns compared to their peers. What I like about Fidelity is that they have many funds with no loads and tolerable expense ratios. They also have an excellent S&P 500 index fund, FSMKX. Their Contra Fund, FCNTX, is insanely large, though still manages to perform well.
Bridgeway: A small fund family that I think deserves a second look from most investors is Berkshire. They are highly rated by the Motley Fool, and they offer quite a few solid funds with low expense ratio. They also have aggressive mutual funds, which make potentially good investments for people willing to leave their money in the market for a long time.
Franklin Templeton: One mutual fund family I can’t recommend is Franklin Templeton. Loads and high expense ratios are the name of the game based on my experience. When I was younger and had less stock market experience, my banker talked me into investing into one of their funds (it had a load). My guess is his recommendation was based on whatever kickback he or the bank got.
Vanguard: Unlike most fund families, this group solely runs index funds. Their low expense fees and solid performance makes Vanguard a great choice. You can read more about index funds in our index funds article.