Funds: Love, Hate and Mutual Funds (Linda Stern is a freelance writer. Any opinions in the column are solely those of Ms. Stern. You can e-mail her at lindastern(at)aol.com). By Linda Stern WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If you want to hear someone trash the mutual fund industry, log onto FundAlarm (http://www.fundalarm.com). With wit and irreverence, publisher Roy Weitz has been spearing the titans of pooled investing in his online newsletter since 1996. "I started out kind of cynical and skeptical, and now I am even more cynical and skeptical," he said. "People in the financial services industry can be snakes ... and investors really need to protect themselves." Oh, and here's one other thing to know about Weitz: He invests his own money almost exclusively in mutual funds, both index and actively managed. At the end of the day, Weitz loves them and says the industry is "cleaner and much more investor-friendly and consumer-friendly than it has ever been." He's not unlike the investing public. When New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer slammed the industry in late 2003, individual investors expressed distrust and confusion -- and went on to throw $269 billion in new money into long-term mutual funds in the 14 months which followed. For good reason. Mutual funds remain a great product for most investors. They allow little guys access to the great financial markets with no fuss and no muss. Through mutual funds, individuals can make investments as small as $50 that expose them to the breadth of the world stock and bond markets, or target their cash to very specific slivers: small Brazilian companies or semiconductor shares, for example. Investors who do a bit of homework can do all this at a very low cost, without worrying about where their money is or what to do with it the next day. And under the glare of that Spitzer-focused spotlight, there's been some housecleaning. But maybe not enough. With so much money in funds -- almost $8 trillion by the latest count -- some was bound to slop off into the wrong buckets. Some in the industry still are fighting the biggest reforms, including rules that that would require appointing fund board chairmen who are independent of their parent companies, and would force redemption fees on all funds to discourage fast trading. The biggest stain on the industry -- the myriad, sometimes sleazy relationships between funds and the brokers that sell them -- remains unlaundered. So investor emptor remains the order of the day. Embrace funds for their ability to offer inexpensive, smart diversification, but be careful. While you're waiting for the industry and the SEC and Congress to finish fighting over final regs, protect yourself by following these guidelines:     Continued ... Quelle "Funds: Love, Hate and Mutual Funds" : reuters.com Main page for "Funds: Love, Hate and Mutual Funds"