Top 3-4 mutual fund companies ...to invest in?

Where would I look to find financial backgrounds and profiles on these type companies?

I'm looking for both long and short term investment(s).

Do you want to invest in the companies or the mutual funds that the companies offer? I believe the very top companies are privately held. Vanguard and Fidelity. A couple that you can invest in is Franklin Templeton. The ticker is BEN. And T Rowe Price . The ticker is TROW. You can find the pertinent data on Yahoo Finance. Others you might consider are Eaton Vance EV, Blackstone BX, Janus JNS, Alliance Bernstien AB.

But if you are interested in investing in their products, than stick with Fidelity, T Rowe Price, and Vanguard. Also Royce Funds.

www.morningstar.com

There are many websites that provide information on Mutual Funds. But a good authority on Mutual funds comes from Morningstar. Visit morningstar.com for details. Here is a good URL for more info on how to select Mutual funds:

http://creating-wealth.blogspot.com/2007...

Echoing the other comments check out Morningstar (and Lipper).

The real answer depends on your own personal financial situation, time horizon, risk tolerance, investment objectives (i.e. for retirement, income, growth, etc.) and other factors. "Making money" is NOT a complete answer :)
A good mutual fund company is responsive, willing to help and answer questions, has an extensive and educational website, mostly clear prospectuses and the like.
Good mutual funds are again dependent on your own situation but look for no-load, low expense ratio (< 1%) funds with a money manager with a long tenure and relatively a low turnover rate << 100 % (if investing in a stock fund in a taxable account). Vanguard has very low cost (does not mean low quality) funds.

Get some books on the subject and some websites like fundadvice.com My $0.02

Hi Arianna,

There are many good mutual fund companies. I am most familiar with no load mutual funds so I can provide you with a few no load mutual fund companies such as Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Dodge & Cox, Royce and Metropolitan West. No one mutual fund company is the best at all investment strategies. T. Rowe Price is very good at domestic equity strategies while Royce specializes in smaller cap value investments. For fixed-income, Vanguard, Metropolitan West, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price are all very good.

To evaluate the financial backgrounds and profiles of some of these mutual fund companies, just go to their websites and learn about the funds that they offer. You should pay careful attention to the investment backgrounds and experience of the portfolio managers and analysts. Many mutual fund companies have very detailed information about their portfolio managers posted on their websites. Some also have detailed information about the mutual fund analysts that support the portfolio managers.

I hope this helps.

Michael A. Weiss, CFA
The Editor
The Mutual Fund Investor
http://www.mutualfundinvestor.net