Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused

It is generally accepted that commerce came first and language came shortly thereafter. The need to communicate was much more likely based on the transfer of goods, even at the basest of levels than it was to express desire or hope. Iranian archaeologist Yusef Majidzadeh believed that he found the basis of written language after years for searching through the of empire of Mesopotamia.

The city this man sought was Jiroft. Ever since the Iranians lowered their culture wall and allowed archaeologists like Majidzadeh back into the country, he has sought a city that he believed to not only be rich in Bronze Age capital but the oldest example of written language.

I mention this in the book “Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2008)” for two reasons. First, the man’s perserverance (with a little bit of luck thrown in by way of a flash flood that suddenly revealed the ancient city), a belief that he never lost sight of and the chances of this language, almost 4,000 years old will reveal how commerce got its beginning.

Granted, only three tablets have been found and on those three, only 59 symbols appear. Hardly the stuff of contracts, mergers or even bailouts but significant nonetheless.

Debt is what makes our society function. It does so by allowing one person to borrow money with the promise of repaying it. They in turn take the money and invest it in an idea or into another investment, hoping to make a return on the money, enough to pay back the lender and do so with interest and to give the borrower a profit for her/his efforts.

As we start the chapter on the Collective Investment Scheme. we begin to explore how, when investors group themselves together in a mutual fund, they can achieve less risk and greater reward because of it. Mutual Funds, which I explain have five basic components, help investors achieve this goal much more easily than if they had done it alone.