The people who have the most control over how your mutual fund will perform are the fund managers. If they do a bad job with their picks, the fund will not do well and you will most likely lost money. It is important to do your homework when trying to find the managers who run the best mutual funds. One thing many people look at is how many years experience a fund manager has. Most people want a person who has some years of managing a mutual fund under their belt. This doesn’t mean a new fund manager can’t do good but most likely someone with years of experience will have a better understanding of what to do in all situations.

Along these lines you should also pay close attention to how your fund manager did in the past. You have probably read many times that past performance does not indicate what will happen in the future but it does give you a good idea if the fund manager is any good or not. For example if a mutual fund manager never had a winning year, most likely he or she is doing something wrong. If fund manager had lots of success in previous years it would seem like they would have a good shot at keeping up their positive record.