What is the difference between unit investment trust fund and mutual funds?

You always know exactly what you own in a Unit Investment Trust because it's unmanaged. The stocks never change, just their weighting changes. The same stocks will be in the UIT when you sell as when you bought. A mutual fund is actively mananged and can own lots of stocks and the manager buys and sells the stocks according to what he/she thinks the fund should own (to put it in simple terms.) Generally, UITs own fewer stocks than mutual funds so you can really get into some specific areas in the market with a UIT.

hi

A unit investment trust can be as the previous answer said, an investment group.
A mutual fund is just that, an investment group, with the ability to issue unlimited shares, to be redeemed not sold.
Another issue for an unit trust, at least as defined, and sold on stock exchanges, is a company, that under law, at least the new canadian law, pays a percentage of its cash flow out as income distributions, i.e, an example, would be Allied Cold Storage, symbol FRZ/UN.to, that run warehouses and storage and had a 5.2% distribution yield last year.

The kinds of businesses that are forming under this category were primarily energy, but now range from consumer goods [The Brick(symbol BRK/UN.to)] to casino's to transportaion, etc.
Most are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but some are dually listed and traded in the USA on the NYSE or AMEX.