SEC Chief Counsels Calm
<i> Bloomberg News</i>
Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wednesday urged mutual fund investors not to overreact to third-quarter fund losses.
“I am concerned they’ve never seen this before, they’ve never seen a downturn of this magnitude,” Levitt said on “NBC Nightly News.” “Markets by definition go up and down. The most important factor is to neither fall in love nor become disenchanted with securities.”
After seven years of growth, the mutual fund sector suffered declines in the third quarter. The average domestic stock fund lost 13% of its value, and only 14 of 2,377 funds that invest in a cross-section of U.S. stocks made money, according to Morningstar Inc., the fund research group in Chicago.
