Re: lack of customer service and marketing [LONG]. You do have a point. Despite the problems, they truly are a cinderella story - starting in a bedroom seriously investing in a sector that the *entire* investment establishment were mocking them for. Now this same investment community is analyzing Jacob's work to help dictate their own portfolios.
But I agree somewhat with Dr. Paul Farrell of CBS Marketwatch.com. It wasn't totally a shot out of the dark. They were among the very best performers as early as 1st qtr of 1998. And they were #1 in the mutual fund universe *long* before the year ended. The only reason their purchases didn't explode was that the two major fund ranking agencies - Lipper and Morningstar did not yet initiate coverage on them. Lipper started in December and Mstar around the end of January. Once those two got crackin', every serious mutual fund investor knew this fund existed, and the $ started pouring in.
But you could have seen it coming months before. The only reason Lipper waited till December is, apparently, the small asset size of the fund until then. And Mstar told me wwwfx failed to provide the most basic info for them to initiate coverage but they said they would initiate it anyway after I begged them and pointed out the unbelievable demand for the fund. My "Internet Fund Fan Club" webpage and ubiquitous presence on all the major online financial forums since the end of December also played a major role... particularly in providing enough information about all Net funds and indices to at least give the masses comfortable with the idea of Net fund investing. I helped these investors "pull the trigger" rather than them having to dedicate all their free time for weeks on end before getting the confidence and knowledge before making the first purchase. But I only work with the masses bottom-up to get the word across. It spreads like wildfire but there's just a part of the population you can only target effectively by top-down marketing (working closer with brokers, fund ranking agencies, and the media) and it's up to wwwfx to do that.
It's just all part of the bigger story - whoever runs this fund is not really concerned about getting more investors on board. All other fund families are aggressively marketing. Do a keyword search of "internet fund" in Yahoo! and a Munder NetNet banner pops up. Do the same search in Dejanews and "Strong Funds" family pops up. Which is hilarious, because the Strong Fund in question is a pseudo-Net fund trying to cash in on that aspect. Monument Funds is the baby of the group - Alex Cheung and Dave Kugler are always doing press releases and getting interviews. Even little wwifx was issuing press releases on PR Newswire years ago. little things like that which wwwfx doesn't do.
If they really wanted to, they could double the # of investors within a few weeks. But they don't, this doesn't bother me. We're reaching a size where drag on return considerations are around the corner and permanent closing of the fund will happen. Rather than size (although scale will bring more efficient operating experiences), I'm more concerned with customer service. You know, basic stuff - like answering the goddamn phone. But this area is getting quite respectable now. Now if they make sure no more accidents happen ("Sorry, everybody. We ran out of shares again. bye bye") I'm looking forward to a long relationship with them.
James Thompson wrote:
>> While I don't condone a complete lack of service from the fund, perhaps they
experienced interest beyond their wildest expectations and could not handle the
response? I see it as a good sign that they outsourced the administration of the fund.
I too sent away for an application kit and returned it with a check. On the same day I
sent the check, I learned the fund was closed until a vote to establish new shares. I hope
they keep my check and process it after the vote. |
