#BEST PERFORMING MUTUAL FUNDS PAST MONTH FULL#

This 20-page report also includes a follow-up assessment of funds that did well in last year's rankings, a mutual fund roundtable with analysis and advice from the experts and a report on the burgeoning number of Internet sites with information of use to Canadian investors. The accompanying tables show the best and worst funds in six major categories based on three different measures: the annual compound return over three years the risk-adjusted return over three years and the average annual return in each of the past five years. How good has the market been? That all depends on where investors put their money, as can be seen from this year's Maclean's mutual fund rankings, calculated by BellCharts Inc., an independent Toronto-based company that analyzes fund performance. 'The market's been very good to people, and I think a lot of people have let their guard down.' (The most recent bear market, commonly defined as a drop in securities prices of 15 per cent or more, lasted from January to October of 1990.) 'You have to be prepared for occasional down markets,' Pynn warns. That said, Pynn is worried that investors have been lulled into a false sense of security by several years of above-average gains. 'The big problem, of course, is that nobody knows really what's going on in Asia and what the ultimate impact will be,' says Fred Pynn, Canadian equity fund manager for Bissett & Associates Investment Management Ltd. If they are wrong, investors who opt to remain on the sidelines in the early months of 1998 may miss out on some screaming bargains - funds that have taken a big hit recently but could recover quickly if analysts decide that the seriousness of the Asian situation has been overblown. If those predictions are right, Canadian investors may be in for a nasty surprise this year. Some analysts go much further, suggesting that the recent flurry of currency devaluations in South Korea, Thailand and other Asian-Pacific countries will hammer companies that do business in that part of the world and force North American manufacturers to compete against a flood of cheaper imports, from cars to computer parts.

#BEST PERFORMING MUTUAL FUNDS PAST MONTH FULL#

Economists are still struggling to assess the full extent of the Far East crisis, but even the optimists acknowledge that it will cut deeply into demand for Canadian forestry and mining products, rendering unlikely a speedy recovery in the share prices of some of the country's biggest companies. The bad news? As 1998 gets under way, the investment outlook is more uncertain than it has been in years - witness the 4.2-per-cent drop in the Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index since Jan. For holders of Canadian equity mutual funds - the basic ingredient in many investors' retirement portfolios - the reward for keeping the faith was an average 1997 return of 13.6 per cent, down sharply from 25.6 per cent in 1996, but still about three percentage points higher than the stock market's long-term historical average. With panic sweeping through Southeast Asian financial markets and share prices zigzagging wildly on computer screens around the globe, stock market investors needed patience and steady nerves to hang in when many of the pros were advising them to sell. First, the good news: the bear didn't strike in 1997, although only the hard-of-hearing could have missed the growling and gnashing of teeth off in the distance.

Best performing mutual funds past month