Steel Path - Master Limited Partnership,MLP Mutual Fund,MLP

Author : Jim Knight

What Are The Highest Performing Mutual Funds In 2010

Nowadays, while evaluating and selecting the best performing mutual funds, investors look at the fund performance for 6 months to a year down the road. The highest performing mutual funds in 2010 have surprised many investors and investment pundits due to its negative correlation with the recent past.

The following were the highest performing mutual funds in F.Y 2010

Templeton Global Bond advantage Oakmark International Fund T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund Dreyfus International Bond American Century Global Gold A

Templeton Global Bond advantage

One of the top performers in the bond mutual fund segment in 2010 was the Templeton Global Bond advantage. This fund seeks current income with capital appreciation and growth of access. The fund normally invests at least 80% of net assets in bonds including debt securities of any maturity, such as bonds, notes, bills and debentures. In 2010 it was able to achieve returns of 9.88% with a absolute growth of 81.41%.

Oakmark International Fund

The $6 billion Oakmark International fund reduced their exposure in the emerging markets to about 5 percent and focusing instead in finding promising stocks in troubled economies like Japan and Europe. Emerging-market equity funds returned 19 % to their investors in 2010. They attracted more than $92 billion from investors compared to $180 billion by the bond funds.

T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund

T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth fund invests 80 percent of its assets in large and mid cap blue-chip growth companies that have the potential for above-average

earnings growth, while sometimes seeking out companies that will have good prospects for dividend growth. As of January 05, 2011, the fund has assets totaling to $11.35 billion.

Its portfolio mostly consists of holdings in U.S. large cap companies. As of the end of June, Apple, Google, Amazon and American Express are all listed among the fund's largest holdings. The fund has owned Google and Goldman Sachs since their respective IPOs. T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth fund was able to give a CAGR of 16.4% in 2010.

Dreyfus International Bond

Dreyfus International Bond fund normally invests at least 80% of assets in fixed-income securities. It also invests at least 65% of its assets in non-U.S. dollar denominated fixed-income securities of foreign governments and companies located in various countries, including emerging markets. The fund is allowed to invest up to 25% of its assets in emerging markets. The investment seeks maximize total return through capital appreciation and income. This fund was able to perform very well last year in a downtrend market. The fund gave a return of 7.43% in 2010.

American Century Global Gold A fund (ACGGX)

American Century Global Gold A fund (ACGGX) was able to give a return of 28.43% in the last year. The fund manager Mr. William B. Martin has been managing this fund since 1992. The lion share of its assets is invested in securities issued by gold firms. The fund purchases both domestic and foreign markets, including those issued from developing markets. This fund was set up in order to achieve both current income and capital growth, which it also was able to offer in the turbulent times last year.

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The History Of The New York Stock Exchange

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” - Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American short story writer and novelist.

New York has often been described as the center of world business, and if it be so, there’s no questioning what is its throbbing heart - the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). For some time now, no company can be said to have truly “arrived” until it was listed on the NYSE. Here then, is a short history of the NYSE’s long and illustrious career as the barometer of the nation’s, indeed the world’s, financial health.

The history of the NYSE can be said to have begun in 1792, when twenty-four prominent brokers and merchants gather on Wall Street to sign the Buttonwood Agreement, agreeing to trade securities on a achievement basis. At that time, Bank of New York became the first company to be listed on the New York Stock & Exchange Board.

The first base of operations was at 40 Wall Street in a rented room, which was eventually destroyed in the Great Fire of New York in 1835. In 1863, the name New York Stock Exchange was adopted, and in 1865, it moved to 10-12 Broad Street. As trading multiplied over the next four decades, a larger building was required, and finally inaugurated on on April 22, 1903.

Over the next few decades, the Garage, the Blue Room, the Extended Blue Room and the Bond Room were added. As electronic trading gained popularity, the NYSE decided to close down many of the rooms that had been added by earlier expansions.

Currently, the NYSE is operated by NYSE Euronext, which was formed by the NYSE's 2007 merger with the fully electronic stock exchange Euronext. This merger brought together major marketplaces across Europe and the United States with histories stretching back more than four centuries. The combination was by far the largest of its kind and the first to create a truly global marketplace.

Even as the NYSE developed into the marketplace of the world, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. One of the first shocks occurred when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, leading to the exchange being closed for around a week. Then, in 1920, a bomb exploded outside the NYSE, killing 33 people and injuring more than 400. The scorch marks are still visible on the building.

October 24, 1929 marked the Black Thursday crash at the NYSE, leading to the the sell-off panic which started on Black Tuesday, October 29 and often considered the initiator of the Great Depression. On October 19, 1987, also known as Black Monday, the benchmark index (Dow Jones Industrial Average) dropped 508 points, a 22.6% loss in a single day.

There was also the Mini-Crash of 1989 on October 13, 1989 when a UAL deal went bust, causing the Dow to fall 190.58 points, or 6.91%. The Asian Financial Crisis led to a 7.18% drop in value (554.26 points) on October 27, 1997. There was a sudden 998 point drop on May 6, 2010 but the markets rebounded immediately.

In spite of these hiccups, the NYSE has progressed on its way as the predominant stock exchange in the world with the market capitalization of its listed companies at totaling $11.92 trillion as of Aug 2010.

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