MarketWatch's Paul Merriman makes light of mutual fund truisms that mutual fund shops will never advertise.

Among his parody ads are "Our fund is much more risky than you think" and "Sure, we have a greater track record but then was then and this is now. The manager who created our record left for a better-paying job."

MarketWatch explains how mutual funds keep some of this information from investors:

"Our fund family's overall track record isn't as good as it looks, because we can and do manipulate funds in order to improve our statistics."

It has everything to do with survivorship bias:

"When a fund performs poorly, the fund family can close or merge its assets with another fund that has done better. Instantly, the 'dog' funds are gone and the average of open funds is instantly improved." 

Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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