What the experts say

The trouble with fees

When it comes to finding a good fund, most investors “don’t know the whole story,” said Brett Arends in The Wall Street Journal. Among other things, there exists the matter of fees. There’s the “expense ratio”—annual fees that could range from next to nothing to 2 percent a year. If you buy through an adviser, you might also pay an up-front “load,” or sales commission, and if you sell too early you could be hit with early redemption fees. Then there are trading costs, which are “buried” in the fund’s Statement of Additional Information. The higher a fund’s turnover, the more you pay. No big deal? Think again. “Over 30 years, a fund with investments earning 7 percent a year, with no fees, would turn $10,000 into $81,500.” A fund with a 5.75 percent commission and 1.5 percent in annual fees would grow to just $49,500.

New home, no thanks

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With foreclosure and short-sale bargains in such abundance, buyers have little interest in shopping for new homes, said Anna­Maria Andriotis in SmartMoney. Sales of new homes plunged 28 percent last year, compared with a modest 3 percent decline in existing-home sales. New homes typically are slower to recover, but analysts say this is extreme. Some of it can be explained by price—today’s new homes are 29 percent more expensive than existing ones. But a “shift in consumer psycho­logy” may also be at play. Buyers today seem to favor smaller, low-maintenance homes and are shopping in or near cities, where new homes are less common. That can create opportunity: In some hard-hit markets, builders are being forced to sell new homes for less than they cost to build.

A gusher of a deal

Instead of complaining about rising prices at the gas pump, “why not stake a claim” in a continued climb? said Ali Velshi in Money. Oil stocks have had a good run, but “the case for investing now is solid.” While the world currently consumes as much oil as it produces, demand from fast-growing economies like China, combined with the fact that new oil is in “harder-to-reach spots,” should mean rising oil prices for the “foreseeable future.” Taking positions in an oil giant such as Conoco­Phillips is one way to go. Among funds, the Vanguard Energy Fund has an “excellent long-term record” buying oil stocks, while Guinness Atkinson Global Fund specializes in following the industry’s smaller firms.