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Top Performers

Newton’s first law of motion states that an object set in motion will stay in motion until another force acts upon it. This law applies to everything from apples to mutual funds. A mutual fund that is increasing in value should continue to increase in value until some other market force acts upon it. So not knowing what is going to happen in the future, the best thing you as an investor can do is identify those funds that have a high likelihood of increasing in value because they are currently increasing in value.

Yahoo! Finance’s Top Performers does just that. It identifies those top-performing funds.

Top Performers scans the current market to find those mutual funds that have been beating the competition during four time periods:

3 months

1 year

3 years

5 years

Seeing four time periods allows you to see which funds are currently doing well and which funds have been doing well over the long term.

In most cases, you will want to focus your attention on the shorter time periods because those are the funds that currently have the most momentum and have the highest likelihood of performing well in the near future. To access the Top Performers video, click here.

Your task here, however, is not to run out and buy the funds on this list. Your task is to look over this list and see if there are any noticeable patterns. For instance, are a majority of the listed funds international funds or are they large-cap funds? Are they energy funds or are they small-cap funds?

Once you know which types of funds are doing well now, you are ready to use Yahoo! Finance’s next tool—Fund Screener.

Next Article: Fund Screener >>

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