Mad Money Machine

by Paul Douglas Boyer

Some of Cramer’s Mutual Funds

In his new book, Jim Cramer’s Stay Mad for Life, he lists some mutual funds he likes. I thought I would look at a portfolio of these funds. I selected only those that existed on 1 Jan 2000. The results here are from then through 1 Oct 2007. Two things to notice: the risk seems higher than you may want and the expense ratio is also higher than you may want. The next thing an intelligent investor would do is to determine if all market sectors are covered by these funds. One could use Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray tool, for example. Would you own any REITS or Emerging Market exposure by buying these funds? How much international? Of course, being actively managed, you’d never really know would you? Another thing to think about is what is the turnover ratio of each fund. In a taxable account this would mean bad things for you. I don’t see an advantage of buying any of these over a diversified portfolio of index funds.

The "Cost per $100k" column indicates how much each fund would cost you for every $100,000 in your total portfolio. For every $100k in the portfolio, this would cost you $1,226 per year. That is higher than a typical lazy portfolio which usually comes in at about half of that.

Fund Holding  Return   Risk   Exp   Total Cost   Cost per $100k 
 CGMFX  10% 33.48% 28.31% 1.02% 0.10%  $   102.00
 DAGVX  10% 10.26% 16.31% 1.18% 0.12%  $   118.00
 BRAGX  10% 10.76% 24.43% 1.72% 0.17%  $   172.00
 SHRAX  10% 4.62% 19.03% 1.15% 0.12%  $   115.00
 FBRVX  10% 17.05% 15.43% 1.38% 0.14%  $   138.00
 PSLAX  10% 14.73% 16.69% 1.27% 0.13%  $   127.00
 HRTVX  10% 14.52% 16.91% 1.12% 0.11%  $   112.00
 BERWX  10% 14.83% 14.57% 1.26% 0.13%  $   126.00
 MUHLX  10% 11.18% 19.83% 1.06% 0.11%  $   106.00
 SSAEX  10% 3.29% 17.78% 1.10% 0.11%  $   110.00
TOTAL 100.0% 15.60% 15.81% 1.23%  $1,226.00

Results thru 11 December 2007 show a 14% annualized return and a 16% annualized risk.

Wed, December 12 2007 » Blog