SmartMoney - The Wall Street Journal

Front-End Load Sales Charge

The initial sales charge or front-end load is a deduction made from each investment in the fund. The amount is generally based on the amount of the investment. Larger investments, both initial and cumulative, generally receive percentage discounts based on the dollar value invested. A typical front-end load might be a 4% charge for purchases less than $50,000, but might decrease as the amount of the investment increases.

Holdings

This is a fund's most recently reported top securities (excluding cash and cash equivalents for all but short-term bond funds). The securities are ranked by the percentage of the portfolio's net assets they occupy. With this information, investors can more clearly identify what drives the fund's performance.

Lipper makes every effort to gather the most up-to-date portfolio information from a fund. The law, however, requires funds to report this information only two times during a calendar year, and funds have two months after the report date to actually release the shareholder report and portfolio. Therefore, it is possible that a fund's portfolio could be up to eight months old at the time of publication. We print the date the portfolio was reported. Older portfolios should not be disregarded, however; although the list may not represent the exact current holdings of the fund, it may still provide a good picture of the overall nature of the fund's management style.

Inception Date

The fund inception date gives the date on which the fund commenced operations.

Initial Purchase

The smallest investment amount accepted for establishing a new account. Where Clsd appears, the fund is closed to new investors. The minimum initial purchase notifies the investor of monetary restrictions for becoming a shareholder. Generally speaking, institutional funds have the highest minimum initial purchase amounts. For those investors with only a small amount to invest, checking the fund's minimum initial purchase should be one of the first criteria you use when selecting an appropriate mutual fund.

Interest Rate Sensitivity

Interest-rate sensitivity, measured by the average effective duration — the longer a fund's duration, the more sensitive the fund is to shifts in interest rates. The relationship between funds with different durations is straightforward: A fund with a duration of 10 years is twice as volatile as a fund with a five-year duration. Duration also gives an indication of how a fund's NAV will change as interest rates change. A fund with a five-year duration would be expected to lose 5% from its NAV if interest rates rose by one percentage point or gain 5% if interest rates fell by one percentage point.

Investment Objective

Investion Objective is based on the investment strategies and policies set forth in the fund's prospectus. Note that this definition does not always match the fund's Lipper classification, often due to the specific nature of Lipper's classification system. For example, a fund's prospectus may indicate that its investment objective is "capital appreciation," but Lipper may classify it as "large-cap growth." Or a fund may designate itself as a "mid-cap" portfolio, but it may fall into Lipper's "small-cap core" classification, possibly due to changes in the fund's buying habits or differing definitions of the market-cap levels.