How to avoid hidden fees, Wall Street’s legal crime.

From 1983 to 2013, the S&P500, an excellent proxy for the US stock market, grew by 1,102%. During those years, the average mutual fund investor earned 239%!*

Any extended period would show similar results, give or take a few percentage points.

I recently had a zoom meeting with one of our new members. He stated that his advisor-managed portfolio had earned an average of 10% annually for the last three years. He was happy with that.

Below, you can see the S&P 500 returns for those same three years:

• 26.89% in 2021
• 18.40% in 2020
• 31.49% in 2019

When I showed him that, he was no longer quite as happy.

The management fees which investors are aware of certainly don’t account for those large differences. The hidden fees do. Here is a short list of fees, mostly hidden.