Winner: Vanguard

MUTUAL FUND

prospectuses were always such a waste of perfectly good Canadian forests, it seemed. You d call a fund group for information about a fund you might want to invest in, and when the prospectus arrived in the mail, invariably it would end up in the old-newspaper pile, unread.

Now a growing number of fund groups have made these disclosure documents ... dare we say it? User-friendly. Indeed, you might actually sit down and read some of em.

Unfortunately, that growing number doesn t appear to include MFS. Take this explanation of repurchase agreements in the prospectus for MFS Emerging Growth: "Under a repurchase agreement, the fund acquires securities subject to the seller s agreement to repurchase at a specified time and price. If the seller becomes subject to a proceeding under the bankruptcy laws or its assets are otherwise subject to a stay order, the fund s right to liquidate the securities may be restricted (during which time the value of the securities could decline)."

If the language were any more leaden, they d have to mail the thing by parcel post. Now read Fidelity s explanation of the same subject and you realize there s more to your fund s operating rules than esoteric jargon: "In a repurchase agreement, a fund buys a security at one price and simultaneously agrees to sell it back at a higher price. Delays or losses could result if the other party to the agreement defaults or becomes insolvent." Oh, now we get it: There s risk involved.

As streamlined as Fidelity s prospectus is, however, it is Vanguard s that floats to the top. Beginning with a concise, to-the-point explanation of the investment objective of the portfolio -- something other fund groups have tried to copy with limited success -- Vanguard s prospectus moves fluidly to key topics (e.g., investing for the long term, the difference between growth and value investing, portfolio turnover, etc.). The especially clean layout includes red flags sprinkled throughout, denoting must-read paragraphs.

Dreyfus, which placed last in this category, insists it is overhauling all of its fund prospectuses and plans to have new, simplified versions this fall. Based on the one we saw, the change can t come soon enough.