Mutual Fund - Structure

Structure

In the United States, a mutual fund is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is overseen by a board of directors (if organized as a corporation) or board of trustees (if organized as a trust). The board is charged with ensuring that the fund is managed in the best interests of the fund's investors and with hiring the fund manager and other service providers to the fund.

The fund manager, also known as the fund sponsor or fund management company, trades (buys and sells) the fund's investments in accordance with the fund's investment objective. A fund manager must be a registered investment advisor. Funds that are managed by the same fund manager and that have the same brand name are known as a "fund family" or "fund complex".

Mutual funds are not taxed on their income as long as they comply with requirements established in the Internal Revenue Code. Specifically, they must diversify their investments, limit ownership of voting securities, distribute most of their income to their investors annually, and earn most of the income by investing in securities and currencies.

Mutual funds pass taxable income on to their investors annually. The type of income they earn is unchanged as it passes through to the shareholders. For example, mutual fund distributions of dividend income are reported as dividend income by the investor. There is an exception: net losses incurred by a mutual fund are not distributed or passed through to fund investors.

Mutual funds may invest in many kinds of securities. The types of securities that a particular fund may invest in are set forth in the fund's prospectus, which describes the fund's investment objective, investment approach and permitted investments. The investment objective describes the type of income that the fund seeks. For example, a "capital appreciation" fund generally looks to earn most of its returns from increases in the prices of the securities it holds, rather than from dividend or interest income. The investment approach describes the criteria that the fund manager uses to select investments for the fund.

A mutual fund's investment portfolio is continually monitored by the fund's portfolio manager or managers, who are employed by the fund's manager or sponsor.

Hedge funds are not considered a type of mutual fund. While they are another type of commingled investment vehicles, they are not governed by the Investment Company Act of 1940 and are not required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (though many hedge fund managers now must register as investment advisors).