Largest mutual funds and their expenses

The table below lists the 25 largest mutual funds, their expense ratios and the total expense the shareholders in these mutual funds incur each year. The total expense the shareholders incur in a given year is dependant on the expense ratio of the fund and the total dollars invested in the fund by the shareholders. This number also reflects the amount of money the parent company earns in revenues for running that particular mutual fund.

As you can see from the table below, the largest mutual fund in United States is the American Funds Growth Fund of America with total net assets of about $85 billion dollars. This is just the A shares of this mutual fund. The table below does not account for the B, C or any other share classes this fund may have. The class ‘A’ shares alone has about $85 billion in assets. The expense ratio of this fund is 0.62%. Multiply the total assets $85 billion with 0.62% and you get about $530 million dollars. This is how much the shareholders of the Growth Fund of America pay the American Funds to run the fund operations. This also means that the American Funds also gets $530 million dollars a year to manager other people’s money.

The Vanguard group normally has the lowest expense ratios for their funds because of the Vanguard’s unique ownership structure. You could say that the shareholders of the Vanguard funds collectively own the Vanguard group. The largest mutual fund from the Vanguard group that made the list is the 500 index fund, which has a paltry 0.18% expense ratio. The shareholders pay only about $102 million in expenses for their collective $57 billion invested in the 500 index fund. I have recently noticed that the Vanguard mutual fund expense ratios have gone down even some more.

Symbol	Fund Name	Total Net Assets	Expense Ratio	Total Expenses Paid By Shareholders
AGTHX	American Funds Growth Fund of America A	$85,618,712,576	0.62	$530,836,018
CAIBX	American Funds Capital Income Builder A	$78,065,221,632	0.55	$429,358,719
CWGIX	American Funds Capital World G/I A	$77,768,237,056	0.69	$536,600,836
PTTRX	PIMCO Total Return Instl	$75,467,661,312	0.43	$324,510,944
FCNTX	Fidelity Contrafund	$72,805,416,960	0.89	$647,968,211
AIVSX	American Funds Investment Co of Amer A	$69,176,573,952	0.54	$373,553,499
AMECX	American Funds Income Fund of Amer A	$63,430,389,760	0.54	$342,524,105
AWSHX	American Funds Washington Mutual A	$61,855,260,672	0.57	$352,574,986
AEPGX	American Funds EuroPacific Growth A	$58,035,060,736	0.75	$435,262,956
VFINX	Vanguard 500 Index	$57,096,368,128	0.18	$102,773,463
DODGX	Dodge & Cox Stock	$56,480,501,760	0.52	$293,698,609
FDIVX	Fidelity Diversified International	$50,760,208,384	0.91	$461,917,896
DODFX	Dodge & Cox International Stock	$49,587,798,016	0.66	$327,279,467
VTSMX	Vanguard Total Stock Mkt Idx	$48,000,520,192	0.19	$91,200,988
ANWPX	American Funds New Perspective A	$45,675,159,552	0.70	$319,726,117
VINIX	Vanguard Institutional Index	$42,257,670,144	0.05	$21,128,835
FMAGX	Fidelity Magellan	$39,363,391,488	0.53	$208,625,975
ABALX	American Funds American Balanced A	$36,892,069,888	0.58	$213,974,005
ANCFX	American Funds Fundamental Invs A	$36,704,739,328	0.58	$212,887,488
VFIAX	Vanguard 500 Index Adm	$33,773,611,008	0.09	$30,396,250
FDGRX	Fidelity Growth Company	$33,291,870,208	0.96	$319,601,954
FKINX	Franklin Income A	$33,200,670,720	0.63	$209,164,226
FLPSX	Fidelity Low-Priced Stock	$31,330,760,704	0.96	$300,775,303
VBMFX	Vanguard Total Bond Market Index	$30,592,569,344	0.20	$61,185,139
VWELX	Vanguard Wellington	$29,890,820,096	0.27	$80,705,214
-	Totals	$1,297,121,263,616	-	$7,228,231,201

The 25 largest mutual funds hold about $1.3 trillion in total assets and mutual fund shareholders pay a total of $7.2 billion dollars in expenses. One thing to notice from the table below is that every one of the 25 largest mutual funds has expense ration below 1%. That is the good news. The bad news is that many funds from the table are class ‘A’ funds. That means that shareholders paid hefty front loads to be able to invest in them. All of the American funds are class A funds.

Datasource: MSN Moneycentral mutual fund screener as of March 25, 2008