31.   If your retirement portfolio is sufficiently fat that you can afford the substantial risks inherent in buying REIT funds, more power to you.

32.   If you buy a bond fund, buy a no-load.

33.   If you hold U.S. funds that invest in long-term bonds, buy international funds that hold short-term or intermediate bonds, he advised.

34.   If you sold with the intention of buying another fund, the advice is clear cut.

35.   If you use a mutual fund supermarket to buy a fund from a third-party company, you may have to pay a transaction fee.

36.   In it, investors can buy funds from many fund families with a single telephone call and get a single shareholder statement.

37.   In an open-end fund, any number of investors can buy the fund.

38.   In short, buying the fund company could wind up being a surer bet than buying its funds.

39.   In other words, good performance takes a while to translate into stronger sales, since investors ruminate over past returns before buying new funds.

40.   In fact, Brown recently bought a fund that invests in small companies, increasing her exposure to one of the riskiest areas of the market.