A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors to buy stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securitie.

As you probably know, mutual funds have become extremely popular over the last 20 years. What was once just another obscure financial instrument is now a part of our daily lives. More than 80 million people, or one half of the households in America, invest in mutual funds. That means that, in the United States alone, trillions of dollars are invested in mutual funds .

Fixed-income, index funds, exchange-traded funds, no-load funds. The diversity of top performing mutual funds offerings can be overwhelming, even without the complications of the current market turmoil. In this section, we outline what you need to know to select the best mutual funds.

Second on the mutual fund list stood the Vice fund, which was founded in 2002 with the proud intention of devoting itself to “socially irresponsible stocks,” specifically those in the tobacco, alcohol, gambling and military industries. Dan S. Ahrens, the firm’s first manager (he’s now executive vice president of AdvisorShares, a sponsor of exchange-traded funds) said he realized that these “vice stocks” were “nearly recession-proof.”