For all the fund industry's efforts to continue boosting fees, a lot of investors are figuring out ways to avoid them. Powerful currents in the fund industry are pushing the cost of the average mutual fund higher and higher.
Distributors clamor for higher fees that then get shifted onto fund customers' backs.
Such funds usually dwell in the bargain basement in terms of fees. And as retirement plans have become bigger players in the fund world, they have pressed for lower expenses. The migration of investors toward lower-fee funds, Mr. Dougherty says, holds for other types of stock funds besides value funds, though in most cases the decline in expenses paid is smaller than for value funds. Enjoy it while it lasts, fund investors. There's absolutely no assurance that this trend will continue, given the fund industry's hunger for higher fees.