I’ve had some fun and interesting responses to my Globe column last Friday on the Canmore couple that owned 29 mutual funds (RRSP Nightmare: Too Many Funds in Your Basket).
Adrian Mastracci of KCM Wealth Management in Vancouver was the advisor in the column that was called in to help the couple. He called me to say that he’s had people come to him in more extreme situations. If I remember right, he mentioned one client with 40 funds.
Kevin Cork, from The Absolute Group in Calgary, sent me the following note:
One of my most recent clients came to see me with $340,000 in 76 funds ...! The RESP was worth $36,000 and he had 22 funds in that alone!!! From 11 different fund companies. ..Man!
Worse, their portfolio was a long specific history of the trends over the last ten years. Asian funds, tech funds, small cap funds, income trust funds and, of course, the most recent investment was an energy fund from November 2006 ... nothing ever sold or added to, simply a couple new funds each time they went to see their two advisors.
I suggested six funds, they just about had a heart attack so the interim portfolio has ... 14.
Some individual investors have also e-mailed. A couple of those had never thought about how many fund they owned, but after doing the numbers, they admitted they too were in the over-diversified camp.
Can anyone top 76 funds?