One of the best ways to learn about a fund is by reading its prospectus. All stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs are required by law to file a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

When you read a prospectus, you may see a lot of jargon. Fear not! We’ve broken it down and decoded it so you can be a smarter and more confident investor.

What’s a prospectus?

A prospectus is essentially the  financial blueprint of a stock, bond, or fund. (In this article, we’re talking about funds.) The prospectus can help you familiarize yourself with its holdings and objectives, and provide you with information about its performance, managers and fees.

In the old days, a paper version of the prospectus would have been sent to you in the mail. Today, a fund’s prospectus is easily and readily available online. Most times you can find it by simply typing the fund’s ticker and “prospectus” into a search engine.

But the SEC also maintains a database called EDGAR that includes prospectuses, and that’s fully accessible to the public. The SEC keeps all investment prospectuses updated if you want to explore investments or to keep tabs on changes to a fund.

Generally, there are two kinds of prospectus–the summary, and the long-form. It’s advisable to look at the long-form version, as it contains more information.

One of the best ways to learn about a fund is by reading its prospectus.

Here are the main things to look for:

General information

Fund objective: The name of the fund will almost always tell you what the fund’s goals are. But near the top of any prospectus, you’ll also find a general statement about the fund’s objective: Does it track in an index? Is it going after growth or value? Perhaps it focuses on a particular sector or industry, such as technology, energy, or healthcare. As you build your portfolio of stocks and funds, you want to diversify. This section will help orient you as you develop your own strategy.

Fund managers: The names of the people who established the fund, and who runs it, are typically listed. Many times, funds are passively managed because they follow an index. That means there is no active manager picking stocks. Nevertheless, the prospectus will list either an individual or an investment group that established the fund, or oversees it. This can be valuable information for you to conduct more research, or to get in touch if you want to.

Fees and expenses

It’s critical to pay attention to the fees portion of a prospectus, because it will tell you how much it will cost you each year to own the fund. Say a fund has an annual return of 5%, and the total annual fees are 2%, your actual gain would be 3%. Over time, that can really eat into what the investment returns. Generally speaking, you want to keep your fees as low as possible, and industry guidance will tell you that means less than 1%.

Management fees: The managers of the fund may charge for running it.  Management fees are typically deducted as a fixed percentage annually.

12b-1 fees: These are charged for costs associated with the marketing and promotion of the fund, including the sale of a fund through brokers.

Total annual operating expenses, or expense ratio: This is the most important number to keep track of, because it will tell you what it costs to own the fund each year. Generally speaking you want a fund with an expense ratio less than 1%, and as low as 0.25% for index funds with no active manager.

Load: You may be charged a sales fee when you purchase the fund, which is known as a load. You might also be charged a load for selling the fund. Many funds are known as no-load, meaning you can purchase shares–and sell them–without this fee. You might want to seek these out, because they will save you some money.

Redemption fee: If you sell the fund within a short time frame, you may get hit with this charge. For example, if you sell the fund before six months, you might be charged a redemption fee. It’s to discourage market timing–or buying and selling the fund quickly.

You can find out more about fees here.

Holdings

This section is critical, as it will tell you how many companies the fund invests in, and exactly which ones. If the fund is quite large, the prospectus may not tell you each company the fund holds–although that information is public, and widely available on the fund company’s website, other investment sites, or at SEC.gov–it will often tell you the top ten companies in the portfolio, and the percentage of assets it invests in each of these companies. Different companies are assigned different weights in a fund, and this information can help you figure out whether the fund’s investment strategy aligns with your objectives.

Risks

Just as you want to know how your car will perform in bad weather, at high speeds, or in traffic, you also want to know what possibile liabilities your fund might have. The risks section will help inform you about all of that. If the fund invests in only large companies, for example, it will have different risks than if it only follows much smaller companies. The same thing goes for sector-focused funds, which are a subset of the stock market. Each sector is subject to individual economic factors, events, or possible shocks. For example, new taxes or tariffs could negatively affect some industries. Shortages of raw materials might affect others, or new legislation might have consequences for yet other businesses.

Performance

This segment will tell you about the returns of the fund over a period of years. It will tell you things like the total annual return–which will be expressed as a percentage that the fund’s value either increased or decreased during a particular year. (The numbers in the performance section can be quite detailed, and may involve the return after taxes on distributions, which are a part of the fund’s profits.)

The performance portion will also compare the fund’s returns to a category, such as similar funds, typically called peers, or an index such as the S&P 500 or Russell 5000. If the fund you’ve invested in is performing better or worse, compared to a peer or index, that can be useful information about whether you want to invest in or–if you already have–hold on to the fund.

Good to know: In addition to the prospectus, fund companies produce something called a Statement of Additional Information, or SAI. It will provide you with more detailed financial information about the fund, including performance, taxes and debts, as well as details about fund managers and directors. It’s free, but you must write directly to the fund company in order to get it. The address of the fund company is typically included in the prospectus.

The post How to Read a Fund Prospectus appeared first on Stash Learn.

Will the market go up and down? YES. The market will go up and it will go down, and sometimes it will trade sideways. Right now the markets are facing some political noise. And often with noise comes volatility, or turbulence.

Long-term investors shouldn’t be concerned with timing the market. I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it — no one can predict exactly what the market will do tomorrow or next week.

No matter what the market does, continue to buy small amounts of your investments on a regular basis.

I’ve invested through a lot of market cycles and trust me, if an investment professional tries to sell you on a magic formula to crack the market, I recommend contacting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission immediately.

No matter what the market does, continue to buy small amounts of your investments on a regular basis. This is called dollar-cost averaging and it’s really important.  On Stash, we have $5 investment minimums so you can consistently buy small amounts of your investments.

Consider market fluctuations as opportunities to continue adding to your portfolio at lower prices. If the market keeps dropping, keep adding those little amounts. If the market goes up, keep adding those little amounts.

Take a look at these examples from the last 10 to 20 years:  

The past 15 years have been turbulent and these charts reflect how the market responded. You’ll see gains and declines through the dotcom bust, 9/11, the Great Recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and three separate presidential administrations. But staying the course has proved to be the way to go.

Imagine if you’d bought small amounts of these investments all through these ups and downs. You would have harnessed the gains from when the market was up, and bought more when the market was down.

My point is that no one could have predicted these past events. And no one can predict the future. Investing consistently over time is a strategy you can use for the long term.

We are your investment adviser and our interest is in looking out for you, helping you to save and invest. Although we can’t predict the future, try not to sweat the ups and downs.

Turn on Recurring Transactions to make sure you keep investing through every market cycle.

It’s all about the time you are in the market that counts, not how you time it.

Keep Stashing,

Brandon Krieg
CEO, Stash

The post It’s All About Time in the Market, Not Timing the Market appeared first on Stash Learn.

When you invest in the stock market, you’re typically buying shares in publicly traded companies. These companies have gone through a process called an initial public offering or IPO, where the company’s shares are listed on a stock exchange such as the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.

Once their shares are listed, public companies must file information about their performance every quarter, and this information is available to the public to examine.

Companies file their quarterly paperwork with an agency called the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is the federal agency overseeing publicly listed companies, to make sure they are following financial reporting regulations.

Financial analysts who cover companies and specific industries pay careful attention to earnings reports for indications about the performance of a particular company, and its future prospects.

You can find information on any publicly listed company by searching here.

What’s a quarter?

A quarter is a three-month period during the course of a year. There are four quarters in a year. Generally speaking, the first quarter ends March 31. The second quarter ends June 30. The third quarter ends September 30. And the fourth quarter ends December 31. (Some companies may follow other schedules for their fiscal years.)

What kind of information will I find?

Every quarter, public companies file a form with the SEC called a 10-Q. This is a company’s earnings report, and in it you’ll find specific data about a company’s financial accomplishments in the prior three months, as well as data for prior years. Earnings, essentially, are how much money a company made or lost during a quarter.

Here are some key components in an earnings report:

Revenue, or sales: Generally speaking, this is income that a business has from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers.

Net income: This is how much profit a company has made after paying its expenses, debt payments, and taxes, among other things. You can think of it as similar to the cash you have left over after you’ve paid all your expenses for the month.

Generally, companies with profits are successful at doing what they do. Companies that have no profit, or that lose money, are less successful. Exceptions to this rule include startups, or companies in some high-growth sectors, which often need to spend at rapid rates to continue growing and innovating. It may surprise you to learn that Amazon is rarely profitable, yet it is one of the biggest companies around.

Earnings per share, or EPS:  This is a somewhat complicated equation that breaks down profit according to the number of shares a company has made available for sale to the public. If a company’s EPS increases from one quarter to another, it’s a gauge of profitability, and how much money a company has to invest in its ongoing operations.

Other information: Companies may use a quarterly earnings report to talk about executive changes–for example when an officer of the company moves to a new position or leaves. It may also use a quarterly report to talk about any risks it sees in the foreseeable future, such as  from competing businesses, changes to the market where it operates, or from changing customer sentiment.

Why do investors care about earnings reports?

Investors care about earnings because they provide a snapshot of a how a company they’ve invested in–or may want to invest in–is performing. Think of an earnings report as a general health assessment for a company.

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