Unlike stock and bonds, mutual funds offer investors professionally managed portfolios of stocks, bonds, short-term debt or combinations of instruments.  Mutual funds are structured to follow the general stock market or concentrated in large, medium or small capitalization companies. Mutual funds may specialize in long term, medium term and short term debt instruments.  Mutual funds invest in overseas markets, in broader or more specialized sectors of the domestic stock markets, in industry areas such as health, finance, real estate or technology.

By offering a broader spectrum of investment mutual funds reduce risk and increase opportunity. Mutual fund investment, filtered by the daily use and application of timing market indicators created by the Appels, have afforded  clients the security of maintaining capital value during periods of market decline as well as growth in periods of market strength. 

Mutual fund investing provides benefits to investors:

• Diversification
  Spreading fund assets among different investment vehicles, such as different stocks in a variety of industries with different rates of return, helps offset losses in one investment with gains in another.
   
• Liquidity
  Investors maintain immediate access to capital. Most funds can be purchased directly from the mutual fund company, or investors may have a financial advbisor or broker do it for them.
   
• Professional Management
  Mutual fund managers choose securities to buy or sell based on their years of experience in the markets, and on research specific to individual stocks, in keeping with a mutual fund's objective as stated in the Prospectus. 
   
• Trading Efficiency
  Trading mutual funds rather than individual stocks avoids the hidden cost of the bid/ask spread, the difference between the current offered and requested prices for intraday trades. Mutual fund prices are set once a day at market close.
   
• Cost Control
  The Appel companies use investment strategies that focus primarily on no-load or low load mutual fund trading.