Mutual fund disclaimers

Bad Money Advice, written by a fellow that is apparently a Boston hedge fund manager, writes about how useless mutual fund disclaimers are. Specifically, he quotes a study saying that the insertion of the line “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns” has no bearing on the decision to purchase a fund.

This reminds me of trying to legislate warnings against smoking cigarettes – it started with a small warning on the box saying “Warning: The Surgeon General says that smoking is bad for your health”, but it has progressively stepped up to now, where half the package has a picture of some person that hasn’t brushed their teeth in a century and a picture saying “THIS WILL BE YOU”.

You can take it to the ultimate step of packaging them in black boxes called “death sticks” with skulls and crossbones all over them, and it still wouldn’t matter.

Same thing for fund advertising, except consuming mutual funds will only kill you financially.