|
Letter from the ICI Research: Chapter 1: Chapter 2: Chapter 3: Chapter 5: Chapter 6: Chapter 7: Appendix A: Appendix C: |
Letter from the Chief EconomistBrian Reid One of my responsibilities as an economist at ICI is to answer questions from members and the general public about mutual funds and other investment companies. Although we have more than 60 gigabytes of information about funds and investors at our fingertips, more often than not, I reach for the Fact Book. It is one of the most valuable reference tools that I have in my office. In fact, one of my colleagues often precedes his questions with, “The answer is probably in the Fact Book.…” He’s usually right. Maybe because the Fact Book is such a familiar resource, I sometimes overlook how central it has been to the ICI Research program. Shelly Antoniewicz—who led the team that produced this fiftieth edition—showed me some of the first volumes of the Fact Book and other ICI research reports that she had gathered to prepare the “Then and Now” tables and graphs on this year’s inside covers [see figures below]. As I looked through these publications, I realized that some of their content remains part of today’s volumes. ICI Research has grown in depth and breadth as each group of researchers has built upon the foundation of data and scholarship that their predecessors had carefully laid down, and I am particularly indebted to the contributions of ICI’s previous chief economists: Alfred Johnson, Jacob Dreyer, and John Rea. Investor research is one example of how each generation of researchers helped build a program that is central to our current work. The Institute first published survey-based research about mutual fund investors in the 1950s. Over the years, members worked with ICI to conduct other studies, and by the mid-1980s, it had established a dedicated investor research program. Our Tracking Survey, which we launched in 1987, is a core part of our investor research efforts. Each spring, we survey more than 4,000 households about their investing and saving behavior in mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and closed-end funds. The ICI Tracking Survey now ranks as one of America’s longest-running surveys of fund investors. The results, published each fall, serve as a resource to members, journalists, government officials, and educators. Retirement research has also been part of the ICI Research program for decades. As far back as the 1950s, the Institute collected data on retirement assets held in mutual funds in its Institutional Survey. In the 1970s, a chapter on the retirement market became a staple of the Fact Book, reflecting the growing role of mutual funds in the markets for defined contribution plans and individual retirement accounts. Since the 1990s, ICI has been the primary source for IRA statistics in the United States, and our economists co-developed several unique databases including the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database and our newly launched account-level database of IRA investors. These data provide critically important insights about retirement market trends. But the longest track record rests with our ongoing analysis of the economics of the fund industry. The Institute began to collect mutual fund asset and flow data in the 1940s, and some of the earliest Fact Books included discussions of the history, growth, and development of mutual funds, as well as explanations of how funds operated. In recent years, ICI Research has analyzed a variety of topics that focused on the economics of the fund industry, including reports examining fund flows, trends in mutual fund fees and expenses, and cost-benefit studies of regulatory proposals. As I reviewed a half-century of ICI Fact Books, I gained not only a deeper appreciation for the evolution of ICI Research, but a new awareness of its enduring mission. Then as now, the ICI Research Department seeks to bring together the highest quality data and scholarship about investment companies, fund shareholders, and the retirement markets; to serve as a resource for ICI members, educators, government officials, journalists, and the general public; and to facilitate sound, well-informed public policies affecting investment companies, their investors, and the retirement markets. This core mission is central to the work of every member of the ICI Research Department staff. Each spring, they dedicate months of effort, bringing together their talents and deep knowledge, to publish the latest edition of the Fact Book. I hope that readers 50 years from now will recognize that dedication. We clearly recognize that of our predecessors.
Mutual Fund Shareholders*
*Statistics are for 1958 for shareholders of regular mutual fund accounts and 2009 for shareholders of all types of mutual funds.
Share of Household Financial Assets Held in Investment Companies Percent, year-end, 1959–2009
Sources: Investment Company Institute and Federal Reserve Board
Investment Company Industry Statistics1
1Statistics are for 1959 and 2009.
Investment Companies’ Share of U.S. Corporate Equity Percent, year-end, 1959–2009
Sources: Investment Company Institute and World Federation of Exchanges |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
