Oppenheimer Mutual funds

Oppenheimer may not be one of the first names that you think of when someone mentions mutual funds, but in fact Oppenheimer mutual funds are well regarded in the investment industry, although it does not feature in the list of best funds for 2011.

Oppenheimer has had a bad couple of years with its portfolio of asset holdings, but then so have most financial services companies.

The Oppenheimer mutual funds company, more properly called OppenheimerFunds Distributor Inc., operates out of New York and was established in 1960. (OppenheimerFunds is not a mis-spelling on my behalf, it is how they choose to call themselves).

Oppenheimer's website is quite comprehensive, although it is hard to tell how many mutual funds they manage, although it appears to be over 70. This is large number to have under management, so if you want to invest in Oppenheimer mutual funds, check out the statistics carefully.

Examples of the mutual funds that Oppenheimer manage are: Oppenheimer Champion Income Fund, Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund, Oppenheimer Equity, Oppenheimer Equity Income funds and Oppenheimer International Growth and the Oppenheimer Limited-Term Government fund.

To be fair to the Oppenheimer mutual funds group, they offer a great deal of information on their web site including rankings from Lipper and Morning Star. However, they do no seem to offer any online advice concerning how a prospective investor should interpret this information, which is probably because it looks bad (I do not know whether it is or not, but that is why there should be someone there to explain it! ).

It is possible to download the prospectuses for all their managed funds and they do give the good advice to download these before making any investment decisions, although this sort of advice is probably a requirement of American financial institutions.

Whatever, you think of the Oppenheimer mutual funds' investment growth achievements recently, no one can fault them for not giving access to investment data.

Oppenheimer mutual funds cover all the bases including retirement planning, planning for a child's education and providing funds for growth to supplement your day to day life before retirement, should anything happen to reduce your income, like wanting to work part time in order to take care of a sick spouse or relative.

As with many financial web sites, most of your administrative work can be carried out on line. In fact, the members' area is quite comprehensive as is the public area.

Oppenheimer intimate on their website that their mutual funds are only available to American citizens, so if you live outside the USA, it would be worth you contacting them for further clarification or asking a financial advisor in your country to do it for you.

However, my opinion is that if you live outside the United States then there are better places to put your money than in Oppenheimer mutual funds and that is probably true if you live in the USA as well. However, as always, you should check with you independent financial adviser if you like the look of Oppenheimer mutual funds.