Janus Capital Group Mutual Funds

The Janus Capital Group is one of the biggest players in the world of mutual funds. Janus has a reputation for looking after its customers' financial interests well and this has paid off over and over again.

One of the means whereby a mutual fund group can do this is by providing a large family of managed accounts that would suit most investors' needs.

Janus has a assortment of 36 different funds spread over ten managed account types.
These funds specialize in global real estate funds and growth and income funds, amongst others.

One interesting option is the Janus contrarian fund. All of these Janus funds have their own specialized portfolio managers.

In fact Janus Capital Group has won awards for the last three years running, despite the fact that it has been more difficult to create capital earnings than for a long, long time.

If you would like to check the most recent league tables of mutual funds, there are a number of companies that maintain lists; one of them is Lipper, which gives annual awards to mutual funds.

With so much variety, most people who would like to start investing will need to take advice from a specialist financial adviser. There are three ways of going about acquiring this advice:

1] contact a broker, who will appear to give you free advice, but who will in fact be getting paid by your mutual fund firm from the funds that you give them to invest on your behalf

2] contact an independent financial adviser, who will not receive kick-back from anyone, so who will expect you to pay a fee for this independent advice

3] contact Janus (or any other mutual fund group head office) and talk to their fund managers, but do not anticipate independent advice

The third procedure above will supply you with the least independent advice - you will only hear about the company's own financial products.

The first method above will deliver more independent advice, but these brokers will not tell you about mutual funds that will not give them a kick-back such as index mutual funds.

The second course of action above will supply you with completely independent advice or it should and you are able to sue, if you discover later that they have not done that.

They will waive charges from firms that pay kick-backs, but they will charge you by the hour for their advice. Expect to pay approximately the same as you would for a solicitor. It is normally the cheapest and the best route in the long run.

No matter which route you take, you ought to do some research before you go to see an adviser (or talk to one on line) because it is simple to become overwhelmed as you are being flooded with loads of new information in the form of names, numbers and percentages.

You can avoid confusion when considering Janus funds or any other company, by reading as much as you can absorb before you start talking. Make notes on your favourite ideas for likely funds as well and definitely write down questions on points that you do not comprehend.

By tackling your investments in products like Janus' in this fashion, you can also cut down the amount of time that you will have to spend with an independent financial adviser, although paying a couple of hundred dollars for advice that will set you on the correct track for 10-20 years is almost certainly the least of your financial problems.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with Janus Mutual Funds. If you would like to know more, please go to our web site at Mutual Funds