Is there a Mutual Fund or a Category of Funds that specialize in the Retail Market like Wal-mart, Target, etc?

I am a NEWBIE investor with little to no invest knowledge. I am looking to invest into a solid, reputable Mutual Fund that concentrates on the retail sector, i.e. Target, Wal-mart, etc.

You should know that mutual funds are so twentieth century. Depending on the fund, they charge you about .75% to 2% a year just to own them. Some charge you a fee to get in, which can go as high as 8%. A whole lot of them will charge you 2% if you need your money back and you haven't been in the fund for 3 months or 6 months or whatever.

The old-fashioned way to do what you're talking about was to open an account at Fidelity Investments and buy shares in Fidelity Select Retail. I suppose you can still do that but I don't pay attention. Whatever Fidelity has to offer will be expensive in terms of fees.

The modern way is to open an online brokerage account and buy an exchange-traded fund (ETF). Mutual fund propaganda says that transaction costs in a brokerage account will kill you, and that used to be true, but at Zecco.com you can trade for free, or if you want a more established name, go to Scottrade.com and you can trade for $7 per transaction. What you want to buy is a sector fund in retail. There may be more than one, but Retail HOLDRs is the standard (symbol is RTH). It charges an annual maintenance fee but I can guarantee it will be less than anything Fidelity has to offer. And there is no penalty if you need to get your money back.

Another reason to avoid mutual funds is that they can stick you with a taxable capital gain (profit on stock sales) even if you don't sell anything or even if you sell at a loss. This problem is eliminated or greatly reduced with ETFs because normally they don't have capital gains.

Check out http://finance.yahoo.com/etf for more info.

Good luck with investing.

Hi,

For a new comer like you mutual funds are the safest option. You can visit http://stocks.advisorinternet.info for some useful tips and info related to your query. Good luck!

RTH - its an etf that specializes in the retail sector

just google RTH

There are two ETF's that specialize in retail - RTH & PMR, although I would rethink your premise. Better off in a diversified fund or even an index fund.