Funds are sold, not bought. A common misconception is “we have wonderful performance, investors will flock to our new fund because of our past performance/future performance/our investment genius/our incredible good looks”. The truth is that investors have so many options in today’s world that someone needs to sell the investor on the reason they need to purchase the fund. Performance is important, but it is not the only item.
Funds that fail typically do not have a strong method of distribution, do not have adequate sales efforts to convince investors to make an investment. Funds that do a good job gathering assets in early years can lose those assets with poor investment performance. Client’s advisors get paid to recommend changes in their client portfolios. A poor performing fund for several quarters or years is a ripe candidate for replacement.