Another startup is hoping to become the go-to place for investors seeking more information about their mutual funds. This time the new player is MarketRiders and the idea is to give fund shareholders more access to the info about the fees they are paying.

The service promises to compare fees from mutual funds to those of similar ETFs, presumably to encourage them to switch. The service promises that shareholders can save 80 percent on their fees.

MarketRiders is an advisor that charges $9.95 per month to manage client portfolios.

Company Press Release

MarketRiders Launches Free Online App That Reveals All Mutual Fund Fees

Investors Finally See Actual Fees, and How to Cut Them by 80%, With Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

DANVILLE, CA - May 25, 2010 - MarketRiders (www.marketriders.com) today launches its Mutual Fund Fee Analyzer (www.marketriders.com/mutualfund-fee-calculator), a free online service that analyzes the exact fees for over 13,000 mutual funds, comparing them to lower cost Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and showing investors how they can cut them an average of 80 percent to save thousands every year. Investors simply enter their mutual fund names or tickers into the Analyzer to instantly see their actual mutual fund fees and an analysis of how these fees dramatically impact returns over time.

Mutual fund fees are buried in the fine print of a fund's prospectus and until now determining actual fees has been complicated and time consuming. The Analyzer shows in plain dollars and cents exactly what an investor is paying for upfront loads, annual management and 12b-1 market fees. It also shows portfolio turnover which creates extra taxes for investors. Each mutual fund is then compared to a similar lower cost ETF and the savings are compounded out for thirty years.

"Investors who have entered their mutual funds into this powerful tool are shocked," explained Mitch Tuchman, CEO, MarketRiders. "Mutual fund fees are like a cancer in your portfolio, slowly killing your returns year over year, eating away at what you have worked so hard to save. You may not realize it for a very long time, but by then the damage to your portfolio has been done. Now investors can see how this happens in their own portfolio and do what smart investors are doing in droves -- switch to the lower cost ETF alternatives."

Richard Ferri, Forbes columnist and author, commented, "The Analyzer is an excellent new tool that not only tells you how much money you can save by switching to ETFs, it tells you which ETFs to buy to replace your existing high-cost funds."

For example, an investor who entered a variety of well-known mutual funds like Lord Abbett, Eaton Vance, Fidelity and American Funds found that this $100,000 portfolio was loaded with $1,394 in yearly fees and the investor paid an upfront load of $1,255 to buy several of the funds. The Analyzer recommended an alternative ETF portfolio costing only $207 annually -- saving the investor 85% ($1187) per year in excess fees. Compounding the savings over 30 years, the Analyzer revealed that these excess fees cost the investor nearly $400,000 in lost returns.

As part of MarketRiders' ongoing effort to provide transparency about mutual funds and their costs to investors, the company will make its Mutual Fund Fee Analyzer available free to bloggers, publishers, or other online sites and communities. To request access to the Analyzer, send email to info@MarketRiders.com.

About MarketRiders

MarketRiders provides investors with an online portfolio manager to manage their retirement accounts with low-cost ETFs, helping reduce fees by 80 percent so investors end up with 33-50 percent more money at retirement. MarketRiders software watches the portfolio 24x7 and tells investors when it's time to rebalance. MarketRiders has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, US News and World Report, USA Today, New York Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek, MarketWatch and Money Magazine, among others, was named one of the eight Fast Company 2009 Innovative Financial Companies to Watch, and CEO Mitch Tuchman has appeared on CNN, CNBC and Fox. For more information, visit www.marketriders.com.

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE