Vanguard Group

It's tax time and everybody's looking for a break.Ever since the overhaul of the nation's tax system, municipal bonds have stood as one of the few breaks left. Free of federal tax, municipals generally make sense for anyone in a 28 percent or higher individual tax bracket. Mutual funds investing in municipals have skyrocketed to more than $131 billion in assets, a reaction by investors who lost precious deductions.Municipal bond yields are currently attractive in relation to taxable bonds.

Fund manager Robert Markman says investors can improve their performance by "making more mistakes." He should know. He has made - and acknowledged - plenty of mistakes. When Markman issued a press release last week encouraging investors to find the emotional courage to move past mistakes, he raised a much bigger question: "Should investors forget past managerial blunders and let performance cure all ills?" Markman's own case points out how good results can create twisted and confusing decisions for an investment public that tends to be fickle.

Timely suggestions about your money: "Contribute to your IRA, 401(k), 403(b) - or any retirement plan - in the early part of January. With interest compounding tax-deferred, every day counts." (Family Money) "Only one mutual fund manager in 40 can beat the market over time. Don't try to find the needle; buy the haystack. Put your money in an index fund and leave it there." (John Bogle, founder, Vanguard Group) "December is the time for institutions to do `window dressing,' which means that they sell losers so their names don't appear on the list of stocks in their annual report."

CONSUMERS and the media love nothing better than a good price war, with competing businesses slugging it out by dropping prices and creating better deals for customers. But in the much-hyped battle between Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group - the world's two largest mutual-fund families - the excitement over reduced expense ratios has overlooked just what this war is about. Dig behind the headlines and you find that this battle isn't so much about Fidelity and Vanguards declaring war against each other, as it is about the two firms going after everyone else in the business.

`THE back-to-school shopping season is upon us but the economy is still punk and Wall Street's hopes for a consumer spending rebound have dimmed considerably," says Ron Insana, CNBC financial analyst, in Money, September. "So an update is in order from the front line of the U.S. economy - the mall. Few folks know shopping (and shoppers) better than Bear Stearns' Dana Telsey, widely regarded as the country's No. 1 specialty-retail analyst. "Her `Five Favorite Stocks' are Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Coach Inc., Gap Inc., Gucci Group and Tiffany & Co."

WASHINGTON - Mutual fund companies such as Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group would have to disclose stock holdings more frequently under a new rule being developed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agency officials said yesterday. The draft proposal, on which the SEC is to vote later this month, is supported by investor advocates and opposed by the mutual fund industry. Harvey L. Pitt, the lame-duck SEC chairman, recommended the change after accounting scandals at Enron Corp.

Q. My company's profit-sharing fund gives us the choice to invest in a fund called Windsor. I have heard the fund is large, but don't know how well it has been doing. Can you give me some advice?A. Bigger isn't always better, but this is one giant that has done quite well over the long haul.Vanguard Group's Windsor Fund is so large at $7 billion in assets that it's closed to new investors. Your employer apparently is a shareholder of record, thereby permitted to make subsequent investments.

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. - Vanguard Group, the second-largest U.S. mutual fund manager, withheld votes from at least one corporate board nominee at 60 percent of the companies in which it submitted proxies. In all, Vanguard didn't support 30 percent of board candidates during the 12 months that ended June 30, the company said yesterday in a posting on its Web site. The year before, Vanguard voted against 40 percent of individual nominees and opposed at least one director at 70 percent of the companies.

Hope rushed out of America on Oct. 29, 1929. That was the day -- 71 years ago today -- that the New York Stock Exchange crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. Three hectic days of stock trading on Wall Street erased $25 billion from investors' portfolios, a sum equivalent to about $250 billion today. That is roughly the amount of other people's money that George U. Sauter oversees in Malvern, Pa. Sauter, 46, is a would-be entrepreneur whose first ventures failed miserably. He is now lead manager of the world's largest stock mutual fund, the Vanguard Group's 500 Index Fund.

CONSUMERS and the media love nothing better than a good price war, with competing businesses slugging it out by dropping prices and creating better deals for customers. But in the much-hyped battle between Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group - the world's two largest mutual-fund families - the excitement over reduced expense ratios has overlooked just what this war is about. Dig behind the headlines and you find that this battle isn't so much about Fidelity and Vanguards declaring war against each other, as it is about the two firms going after everyone else in the business.

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. - Vanguard Group, the second-largest U.S. mutual fund manager, withheld votes from at least one corporate board nominee at 60 percent of the companies in which it submitted proxies. In all, Vanguard didn't support 30 percent of board candidates during the 12 months that ended June 30, the company said yesterday in a posting on its Web site. The year before, Vanguard voted against 40 percent of individual nominees and opposed at least one director at 70 percent of the companies.

Ten police officers were sworn in yesterday as officers and board members of Vanguard Justice Society, signaling an overhaul of the advocacy group for minority police officers. Each officer and board member was newly elected -- including the president, Sgt. Darryl Massey, a homicide detective supervisor known for his interrogation skills. Massey said the 650-member group would have discussions with police leaders about what he described as a dearth of minorities and women in leadership positions.

WASHINGTON - Mutual fund companies such as Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group would have to disclose stock holdings more frequently under a new rule being developed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agency officials said yesterday. The draft proposal, on which the SEC is to vote later this month, is supported by investor advocates and opposed by the mutual fund industry. Harvey L. Pitt, the lame-duck SEC chairman, recommended the change after accounting scandals at Enron Corp.

`THE back-to-school shopping season is upon us but the economy is still punk and Wall Street's hopes for a consumer spending rebound have dimmed considerably," says Ron Insana, CNBC financial analyst, in Money, September. "So an update is in order from the front line of the U.S. economy - the mall. Few folks know shopping (and shoppers) better than Bear Stearns' Dana Telsey, widely regarded as the country's No. 1 specialty-retail analyst. "Her `Five Favorite Stocks' are Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Coach Inc., Gap Inc., Gucci Group and Tiffany & Co."

Timely suggestions about your money: "Contribute to your IRA, 401(k), 403(b) - or any retirement plan - in the early part of January. With interest compounding tax-deferred, every day counts." (Family Money) "Only one mutual fund manager in 40 can beat the market over time. Don't try to find the needle; buy the haystack. Put your money in an index fund and leave it there." (John Bogle, founder, Vanguard Group) "December is the time for institutions to do `window dressing,' which means that they sell losers so their names don't appear on the list of stocks in their annual report."

Hope rushed out of America on Oct. 29, 1929. That was the day -- 71 years ago today -- that the New York Stock Exchange crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. Three hectic days of stock trading on Wall Street erased $25 billion from investors' portfolios, a sum equivalent to about $250 billion today. That is roughly the amount of other people's money that George U. Sauter oversees in Malvern, Pa. Sauter, 46, is a would-be entrepreneur whose first ventures failed miserably. He is now lead manager of the world's largest stock mutual fund, the Vanguard Group's 500 Index Fund.

You're thinking of investing internationally because you're aware that average total returns from stocks in some foreign countries have exceeded 20 percent annually over the last five years -- well above the average 11.7 percent return from U.S. stocks.But you're concerned because a few important foreign stock markets, such as Germany's, Japan's and Switzerland's, have gone up only around 5 percent annually in U.S. dollars, according to Morgan Stanley Capital International. That's less than half the U.S. rate.

Fund manager Robert Markman says investors can improve their performance by "making more mistakes." He should know. He has made - and acknowledged - plenty of mistakes. When Markman issued a press release last week encouraging investors to find the emotional courage to move past mistakes, he raised a much bigger question: "Should investors forget past managerial blunders and let performance cure all ills?" Markman's own case points out how good results can create twisted and confusing decisions for an investment public that tends to be fickle.

Frenzied competition among mutual fund companies for investors has led to some gimmicky marketing, a trend the Vanguard Group, known for its plain-vanilla approach to investing, has long resisted. But now, it seems, the company is succumbing.Taxes is the latest buzzword among funds, and Vanguard is jumping in with a series of funds in July that are intended to reduce shareholders' taxes while retaining stocks.But while "Vanguard's marketing department will have a field day selling these funds, investors already have better choices available at Vanguard," said Daniel P. Wiener, who edits the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, a newsletter based Boston.

Q. My company's profit-sharing fund gives us the choice to invest in a fund called Windsor. I have heard the fund is large, but don't know how well it has been doing. Can you give me some advice?A. Bigger isn't always better, but this is one giant that has done quite well over the long haul.Vanguard Group's Windsor Fund is so large at $7 billion in assets that it's closed to new investors. Your employer apparently is a shareholder of record, thereby permitted to make subsequent investments.