What is the difference between a mutual fund, a money market fund & a total return fund in investing?

all of the above sound like they can fall under the mutual fund title. A mutual fund typically invests in ten to hundreds to tens of hundreds of stock offering companies or different types of bonds or shorter term vehicles like corporate paper. So, there many types of mutual funds stock funds, bond funds, stock with bond funds, municipal bond funds, government, bond funds, tax free money markets, regular money markets and others in-between. The difference in the three you listed looks to deal directly with risk tolerance, time frame and goal. A stock mutual fund generally should have a holding period of 5 years or more. A money market can be held for 2 minutes, days, year decades, it really does not matter a whole lot because it is very low risk and could be no risk if it is FDIC insured. Finally the total return fund could be a bond fund which may or may not be tax free. It assumes more risk and volatility than the money market but less than the stock fund. Another idea to keep in mind is that there are different grades of bond funds (high, medium and low quality) and stock funds (large, mid and small cap) which invest in different size companies. Take a look at www.wellsfargoadvantagefunds.com, click individual investor, click education and advise tab, click investing 101 and it will help you.

http://www.answers.com/money%20market%20...

http://www.answers.com/mutual%20fund

not sure what a total return fund is, but if you mean an absolute return fund, that's a fund that looks to make positive returns whether the overall market is up or down, while index tracking funds try to beat the index they are tracking.