On your own, you might be able to afford one or two tickets, but your money combined with your co-workers' gives you a share in a great many more. For the average Canadian, that's a lot of money. That is why millions of investors now own units in mutual funds. During this period, the number of shareholder accounts also increased sharply, rising from less than one million to more than fifteen million. Approximately one in four households, or seven million Canadians, now own at least one mutual fund.
Mutual funds are popular because they make investing in financial markets easy.
Funds invest your and other unitholders' dollars in equity and debt securities. An equity security is a stock or share in a corporation's earnings and assets such as land, buildings, or machinery. Debt securities include bonds and money-market instruments. A bond is an IOU issued by a government or corporation certifying how much you have loaned it and the terms of the loan. The investment objectives of the fund determine which of these securities the manager buys.