Morningstar Guide to Mutual Funds: Five-Star Strategies for Success

This book is clear, concise, and effective. I've read the first four chapters so far, and it has explained everything I've wanted to know about choosing mutual funds. I was absolutely ecstatic when I saw that the chapter on mutual fund management has an overview of the pros and cons of a number of the well-known fund companies.One of the reviewers was complaining that this book relies too heavily on Morningstar research. Well, first of all, Morningstar is one of the premier analysis firms in the industry, and as such they have a wealth of great information. Secondly, I have yet to see a place in the book where they ask you to pay for anything. A good portion of the Morningstar website is free, and the book mentions a Morningstar mutual fund book you can get from public libraries. The reviewer also complains about the Morningstar 5-star rating system. The book explains that the star ratings can be used as a screening tool, and stresses the many other factors that should be considered when evaluating a fund. When used in conjunction with other objective criteria, the star rating is a powerful tool to evaluate past returns and volatility.With all of this in mind, if you are absolutely new to investing, you should become familiar with certain basic investing terms and concepts before reading this book. I highly recommend either The Wall Street Journal's Complete Guide to Personal Finance or The WSJ's Complete Money and Investing Guidebook. For most people, I would say the Guide to Personal Finance would be a good primer.

Ms Benz is a senior manager at Morningstar, probably the foremost rater of mutual funds. It came as no surprise that she knows her subject and is very good at explaining and making suggestions. Much of the material in the book can probably be gleaned from Morningstar's website, Benz has rounded up a lot of the good stuff here in one place. This is not a get-rich-quick book--it provides a fairly broad look at what is available in mutual funds and suggests how to use them.

Straight forward guide to Morningstar’s rating methodologies. I just wish there was a more updated version showing the look forward categories (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral and Negative). Still great book to get acquainted with the process Morningstar uses to rate mutual funds.

I really enjoyed reading this book, very informative, especially good for someone new to mutual funds like I was. Bought an index fund after reading this book, I might have gone with a sector fund, say technology, but opted out because the book explained the risk of a sector fund.

He loves to this book because it makes mutual funds investing very cute and dry or black and white like he likes it. I am glad I purchased this book so that he could make educated decisions about our financial future. Thank you.

Outdated. The internet specifically Investopedia has much more current information. Very little on ETF funds. I expected to read about Bid / Ask - Volume - Expense Ratio etc etc

The author seems to be biased towards some fund families. The book would be helpful for people who have no knowledge in investing but does not provide much help to some one like me who has some knowledge in investing. I wish she can give more in depth knowledge to some one like me.

This book has been an incredible resource. I am managing my own taxable account for the first time. It helped me quite a bit to take notes and do my quantitative analysis in Excel as I read the book to really soak in all the material. If this is your first time managing your own portfolio of mutual funds, I highly recommend! If it isn't your first time, I'm sure this book still has a lot of good advice you may have forgotten or never learned...

Not written for Indian market. It is for American mutual funds market. But indeed many things can be taken from this master piece.