Help Interprating Data

egamar

Oh - I don't know if sectors have their own benchmarks or whether that's just the sector average. Haven't a clue about this or even if it's an issue. Just thought I'd say so for the sake of completeness!

I don't know who allocates a fund to a sector or category either, although my thinking is that's really of academic interest to us at our level, since we can't affect it anyway!

Don't forget to look INSIDE funds to see what the underlying investments are. The Morningstar X-ray tool is useful to analyse a portfolio in this way. This can help understanding about what constitutes high risk/cautious investments etc etc and how the fund manager balances (hedges) risk in one investment against risk in another, or selects investments which are 'decoupled' (i.e tend not to go up and down together, being subject to different market forces/economic circumstances/whims and fancies) .

Now I can make coffee ....