Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds?
Mutual funds don't have intraday prices. They have net asset values which are calculated periodically (daily or weekly or any other period depending on the fund). This idea does not make sense for most mutual funds. The net asset value, or NAV, is the current market value of a fund's holdings, minus the fund's liabilities, that is usually expressed as a per-share amount. For most funds, the NAV is determined daily, after the close of trading on some specified financial exchange, but some funds update their NAV multiple times during the trading day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_fund I am not certain, but I believe that OppenheimerFunds does not report intraday prices.  I would call them up and ask. Like others have said, mutual funds don't have an intraday NAV, but their ETF equivalents do. Use something like Yahoo Finance and search for the ETF.IV. For example VOO.IV. This will give you not the ETF price (which may be at a premium or discount), but the value of the underlying securities updated every 15 seconds. Look at morningstar holdings.It will list the top 25 holdings and their current price.This will give you a good idea of the intra-day price of the fund.
When interest rates rise, the price of bonds fall because bonds have a fixed coupon rate, and since the interest rate has risen, the bond's rate is now lower than what you can get on the market, so it's price falls because it's now less valuable. Bonds diversify your portfolio as they are considered safer than stocks and less volatile. However, they also provide less potential for gains. Although diversification is a good idea, for the individual investor it is far too complicated and incurs too much transaction costs, not to mention that rebalancing would have to be done on a regular basis. In your case where you have mutual funds already, it is probably a good idea to keep investing in mutual funds with a theme which you understand the industry's role in the economy today rather than investing in some special bonds which you cannot relate to. The benefit of having a mutual fund is to have a professional manage your money, and that includes diversification as well so that you don't have to do that. Risk. Volatility. Liquidity. Etc.  All exist on a spectrum, these are all comparative measures.  To the general question, is a mutual fund a good alternative to a savings account? No, but that doesn't mean it is a bad idea for your to allocate some of your assets in to one right now. Mutual funds, even low volatility stock/bond blended mutual funds with low fees still experience some volatility which is infinitely more volatility than a savings account.  The point of a savings account is knowing for certain that your money will be there.  Certainty lets you plan. Very simplistically, you want to set yourself up with a checking account, a savings account, then investments.  This is really about near term planning.  You need to buy lunch today, you need to pay your electricity bill today etc, that's checking account activity.  You want to sock away money for a vacation, you have an unexpected car repair, these are savings account activities.  This is your foundation.  How much of a foundation you need will scale with your income and spending.   Beyond your basic financial foundation you invest.  What you invest in will depend on your willingness to pay attention and learn, and your general risk tolerance. Sure, in this day and age, it is easy to get money back out of an investment account, but you don't want to get in the habit of taping investments for every little thing. Checking: No volatility, completely liquid, no risk Savings: No volatility, very liquid, no principal risk  Investments: (Pick your poison) The point is you carefully arrange your near term foundation so you can push up the risk and volatility in your investment endeavors.  Your savings account might be spread between a vanilla savings account and some CDs or a money market fund, but never stock (including ETF/Mutual Funds and blended Stock/Bond funds). Should you move your savings account to this mutual fund, no.  Should you maybe look at your finances and allocate some of your assets to this mutual fund, sure.  Just look at where you stand once a year and adjust your checking and savings to your existing spending.  Savings accounts aren't sexy and the yields are awful at the moment but that doesn't mean you go chasing yield.  The idea is you want to insulate your investing from your day to day life so you can make unemotional deliberate investment decisions. In the absence of a country designation where the mutual fund is registered, the question cannot be fully answered.  For US mutual funds, the N.A.V per share is calculated each day after the close of the stock exchanges and all purchase and redemption requests received that day are transacted at this share price. So, the price of the mutual fund shares for April 2016 is not enough information: you need to specify the date more accurately. Your calculation of what you get from the mutual fund is incorrect because in the US, declared mutual fund dividends are net of the expense ratio. If the declared dividend is US$ 0.0451 per share, you get a cash payout of US$ 0.0451 for each share that you own: the expense ratio has already been subtracted before the declared dividend is calculated.  The N.A.V. price of the mutual fund also falls by the amount of the per-share dividend (assuming that the price of all the fund assets (e.g. shares of stocks, bonds etc) does not change that day). Thus. if you have opted to re-invest your dividend in the same fund, your holding has the same value as before, but you own more shares of the mutual fund (which have a lower price per share). For exchange-traded funds, the rules are slightly different. In other jurisdictions, the rules might be different too. There are hundreds of entities which offer mutual funds - too many to adequately address here. If you need to pick one, just go with Vanguard for the low low low fees. Yes, this is important. A typical expense ratio of 1% may not sound like much until you realize that the annualized real rate of return on the stock market - after inflation - is about 4%... so the fund eats a quarter of your earnings. (Vanguard's typical expense ratios are closer to 0.1-0.2%). If your company offers a tax-deferred retirement account such as a 401(k), you'll probably find it advantageous to use whatever funds that plan offers just to get the tax advantage, and roll over the account to a cheaper provider when you change employers. You can also buy mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through most brokerages. E*Trade has a nice mutual fund screener, with over 6700 mutual funds and 1180 ETFs. Charles Schwab has one you can browse without even having an account. Nobody tracks a single company's net assets on a daily basis, and stock prices are almost never derived directly from their assets (otherwise there would be no concept of 'growth stocks').  Stocks trade on the presumed current value of future positive cash flow, not on the value of their assets alone. Funds are totally different.  They own nothing but stocks and are valued on the basis on the value of those stocks.  (Commodity funds and closed funds muddy the picture somewhat, but basically a fund's only business is owning very liquid assets, not using their assets to produce wealth the way companies do.) A fund has no meaning other than the direct value of its assets.   Even companies which own and exploit large assets, like resource companies, are far more complicated than funds: e.g. gold mining or oil extracting companies derive most of their value from their physical holdings, but those holdings value depends on the moving price and assumed future price of the commodity and also on the operations (efficiency of extraction etc.) Still different from a fund which only owns very liquid assets. You better buy an ETF that does the same, because it would be much cheaper than mutual fund (and probably much cheaper than doing it yourself and rebalancing to keep up with the index).  Look at DIA for example. Neither buying the same amount of stocks nor buying for the same amount of money would be tracking the DJIE. The proportions are based on the market valuation of each of the companies in the index. I strongly suggest you go to www.investor.gov as it has excellent information regarding these types of questions. A mutual fund is a company that pools money from many investors and invests the money in securities such as stocks, bonds, and short-term debt. The combined holdings of the mutual fund are known as its portfolio. Investors buy shares in mutual funds. Each share represents an investor’s part ownership in the fund and the income it generates. When you buy shares of a mutual fund you're buying it at NAV, or net asset value.  The NAV is the value of the fund’s assets minus its liabilities. SEC rules require funds to calculate the NAV at least once daily. Different funds may own thousands of different stocks.  In order to calculate the NAV, the fund company must value every security it owns.  Since each security's valuation is changing throughout the day it's difficult to determine the valuation of the mutual fund except for when the market is closed.  Once the market has closed (4pm eastern) and securities are no longer trading, the company must get accurate valuations for every security and perform the valuation calculations and distribute the results to the pricing vendors.  This has to be done by 6pm eastern.  This is a difficult and, more importantly, a time consuming process to get it done right once per day.  Having worked for several fund companies I can tell you there are many days where companies are getting this done at the very last minute. When you place a buy or sell order for a mutual fund it doesn't matter what time you placed it as long as you entered it before 4pm ET.  Cutoff times may be earlier depending on who you're placing the order with.  If companies had to price their funds more frequently, they would undoubtedly raise their fees. In my opinion, if you are doing long-term investing, this is a non-issue.  The difference of hours in being able to trade an ETF during the day vs. only being able to trade a traditional mutual fund at day-end is irrelevant if you are holding the investment for a long time. If you are engaging in day trading, market timing, or other advanced/controversial trading practices, then I suppose it could make a difference. For the way I invest (index funds, long-term, set-it-and-forget-it), ETFs have no advantage over traditional mutual funds.