Financial investment is a game of risks and rewards, the object being to minimize the former and maximize the latter. Concentrating investment capital carries the greatest potential for high dividends,1 but also involves enormous risk as the failure of one or two companies could seriously damage your portfolio.2

One solution to this problem is mutual funds. Pooling the resources of a group of investors in the interest of sharing the risks and diversifying3 their portfolios, this system distributes the capital over a wide range of stocks and bonds and spreads the risks over the group. This reduces the impact of the occasional failure. Moreover, trading as a single entity significantly reduces trading costs.

The first official mutual fund, the Massachusetts Investors Trust, was established in 1924. It experienced growth of more than 700 percent in its first year, and other success stories followed. The stock market crash of 1929 crippled the investment climate for some time. However it provided the impetus to create the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and pass the Investment Company Act of 1940. This set the guidelines that fund companies follow to this day.

Nowadays, with 83 million investors and 7 trillion dollars in assets in the United States alone, mutual funds are a very popular choice for those seeking a skilled intermediary between their savings and the volatile4 marketplace.

1. dividend n. 股息

2. portfolio n. 有價(jià)證券或其目錄

3. diversify v. 使多樣化

4. volatile a. 易變的

金融投資是一種風(fēng)險(xiǎn)和贏利的游戲，其目標(biāo)是將前者降至最低，后者最大限度地提高。集中投資的資本可能會(huì)帶來高額股利的最大潛力，但同時(shí)也伴隨著巨大的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，因?yàn)橐粌杉夜镜钠飘a(chǎn)就有可能讓你的有價(jià)證券損失慘重。

解決這個(gè)問題的一個(gè)辦法是建立共同基金。為了分擔(dān)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)和多元經(jīng)營(yíng)有價(jià)證券，可以募集一組投資者的資金，在大范圍的股票和債券上對(duì)它們進(jìn)行分配，分散組內(nèi)投資人的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。這樣就能減少偶發(fā)的失利帶來的沖擊。此外，以單一實(shí)體進(jìn)行交易大大降低交易成本。

第一個(gè)官方共同基金——馬薩諸塞投資者信托建立于1924年。這個(gè)共同基金第一年就擴(kuò)大了七倍多，以后的成績(jī)也不錯(cuò)。1929年美國(guó)股市暴跌，投資氣候因此而低迷癱瘓了好一段時(shí)間，但也因此而推動(dòng)了美國(guó)證券交易管理委員會(huì)的創(chuàng)立和1940年《投資公司法案》的通過，制定了投資公司至今仍然遵循的方針。

現(xiàn)在，共同基金僅在美國(guó)就有8300萬(wàn)投資者和7萬(wàn)億美元的資產(chǎn)，對(duì)于那些想尋找有經(jīng)驗(yàn)的中介在他們的存款和變幻莫測(cè)的市場(chǎng)之間起媒介作用的人來說，共同基金是一項(xiàng)非常受歡迎的選擇。