Forbes Mutual Fund Guide  Forbes best buys; Forbes graded funds; the Lipper indexes; daily quotes; Forbes fund expense calculator; the roster of fund distributors; glossary of terms. Check out the Forbes Fund Resources categories like "Best & Worst Funds," "Forbes Honor Roll," "Best Value Fund Buys," etc.

Green Jungle  "Jungle Pete" (Peter Johnson, a registered investment advisor) gives a complete overview of mutual funds. Topics include pricing and valuation, load versus no-load, buying and selling funds, and the advantages and disadvantages of mutual funds. Selected terms are linked to a glossary. Market commentary section gives past, present, and future commentaries so you can compare his market saavy. He also reviews his past picks in specific funds so you can check their performance.

Investment Company Institute  Includes news, statistics & research, statistical releases, a section on investing, and more, on mutual funds and investing. Primarily a statistical source on mutual funds.

Morningstar  Free services for investors from the famous mutual fund advisory service. "Morningstar's mission has always been to deliver professional quality information, that the information, insight, and community we provide here will help you make the best investment decisions possible." Free and Premium (for a fee) memberships are also available for those who wish additional access to services.

Mutual Funds Interactive  The company states as its mission "to provide focused, useful content to the mutual fund investor in an online, interactive community." The site lives up to the mission by providing a variety of types of information of use - news and tips, interviews and profiles, glossaries, chat rooms, tutorials on investing, interactive tools and more.

Mutual Fund Investor's Center  Cleanly designed and easy to navigate, this site is divided into centers of information like the Retirement Center, the IRA Center, Women & Investment, Model Portfolios.  The site features current articles of interest and specific investment tips such as Funds for $50 or Less, Top Bond Funds, Lowest Minimum Investment, etc. Lots of excellent information here.

FundAlarm  "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run" -- this is the motto and goal of FundAlarm.  It is a free, non-commercial site that tries to help you decide when it's time to sell a fund instead of when it's time to buy.  To achieve its goal, FundAlarm offers data tables, fund lists, commentary, and a "Discussion Board" so users can share comments.  For the very brave, there is the "Most Alarming 3-ALARM fund" list to tell you just how poorly your fund is performing.  All data is clearly explained in easy-to-understand language.  Investors can sign up to receive email notification each time the site information is updated.

Maxfunds  Provides a basic education on mutual funds plus an advisory service and new funds alert. The site is presently undergoing revision and some services are not available but Maxfunds promises that they will return.

Morningstar  Offers Fund Compare, Fund Quickrank, and Fund Selector as screening tools. Click on "Funds" (at the top) to access these tools.

Mutual Fund Research Center  You'll find a Fund Directory and a Research Wizard that shows you what to look for when selecting a fund. The Fund Screener allows the user to search using a few basic measures. Types of funds are described and some free screening tools can be downloaded.  

SmartMoney  Offers a free fund analyzer in its "Funds" section under Fund Tools in the sidebar menu. Users may screen funds based on the magazine's own fund-grading system.  

New investors who don't really know what criteria to use in screening funds may wish to try sites that provide pre-constructed screens. Quicken, the popular financial software, offers one such site.  Just click on the "Investing" tab and look for "Fund Evaluator" on the sidebar menu to screen mutual funds.  A Stock Evaluator is also available. MoneyCentral (see above) offers assistance on its Investor page. Look on the sidebar menu for "Research Wizard."

• The Individual Investor's Guide to the Top Mutual Funds 
  American Association of Individual Investors publishes this annual guide to funds. It contains 10 years of returns, net asset values, distributions, and expense ratios; 10, 5, and 3 year average annual returns; performance during bull and bear markets; fund returns and rankings by investment category; and fund manager and portfolio composition. Includes a advisory chapter on investing in mutual funds and additional listings for special types of funds, e.g. small cap or global.
   
• Morningstar Funds 500 
  A guide to 500 top mutual funds selected by Morningstar editors and representing a spectrum of investment choices from basic blue-chip funds to real-estate and Latin American funds. The one page reports show what the fund actually owns, how it stacks up against the broad and narrow competition, the total cost statistic, quarterly performance dating back to 1989, standard deviation, risk, and a diversification table indicating how each fund might interact with other funds in a portfolio. Includes a users guide.
   
• Morningstar Mutual Funds  
  Reviews a select group of about 1,700 funds and provides comprehensive, current reports on each. Every full-page fund profile includes the data, evaluations, and analytic tools. Includes commentary on fund investing and the fund industry; editorial spotlights on equity, international and fixed-income markets; aggregate performance data for 44 investment categories; Morningstar star and category ratings, style boxes, and analyst reviews; and Rookie Fund reports. Morningstar staff analyze fund data and interview the fund mangers to compile the reports.

The library also provides many current books on investing in mutual funds. Suggested headings in the online catalog are: Mutual Funds, Mutual Fund Directories, Mutual Funds—Handbooks, Investments, and Stocks. 

Go to the Library catalog  

• Business & Company Resource Center
  Get a company report in Business & Company Resource Center using the name of the company that offers the fund, e.g. Putnam Investments for Putnam Mutual Funds. An extensive business, company and industry database with news, articles, financial documents, rankings, company histories, industry reports, and more. Searchable by company, industry, or article keyword.
   
• Infotrac OneFile
  Provides articles from selected reference books like encyclopedias and almanacs that describe mutual funds. Infotrac is a large periodicals database featuring the full text and citations for newspaper and magazine articles that includes many financial publications.
   
• Newsbank
  Search for full text newspaper articles on finance. Consists of two databases: America’s Newspapers, which indexes the full text of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Orange County Register, San Diego Union-Tribune, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle from roughly 1985 to the present; and Noticias en Español, which provides full text articles in Spanish.

Suggested search terms: Mutual Funds, Bond Funds, Commodity Funds, Index Funds, Institutional Investments, Money Market Funds, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), or Stock Funds. You can also search for a particular fund by name, e.g. Kemper Mutual Funds or Putnam Mutual Funds.

Go to the Library's databases