How do I get a list of the top performing funds between two given dates?
The closest I can think of from the back of my head is http://finviz.com/map.ashx, which display a nice map and allows for different intervals. It has different scopes (S&P500, ETFs, World), but does not allow for specific date ranges, though. I found one such tool here: Point-to-Point Returns tool
As the record date is 7th August, you need to hold stocks on the 7th August closing. You need not hold it till 2nd Sept. The list as taken on 7th August would be processed and instructions given to Bank and the dividends credited by 1st Sept.  Edit: To Clarify Victor's comment Typically from the time one sells the stocks to the time it actually gets transferred has a clearing cycle. Most stock exchanges have 2 or 3 days cycles. i.e. if I sell the stock today, it is still in my name. The money is still with the buyer. On Day 1, the positions are arrived at. On Day 2 the stock gets credited to the buyer and the funds gets credit to seller.  As the question was specific whether to hold the stock till 7th or 22nd Sept, my initial answer was simple. The illustration by Victor is more accurate. No, you will (generally speaking) not see a decrease in your net earnings from crossing a tax bracket: This means that your highest marginal rate (the top bracket you fall into) only applies to the portion of your income that is in that bracket, not your total income. This helps ensure that your total tax burden does not increase measurably from crossing a tax bracket. Be aware that you can still see measurable changes in your total taxes due if increases in income make you no longer eligible for certain deductions and/or benefits that were otherwise reducing your tax burden, but this is not the same as how changes in your highest marginal rate affect your overall average tax rate. Note that when you see a rate table such as the one on efile.com's federal income tax rates page or on Wikipedia's Income tax in the United States page, the rates listed are for each segment of income, not for your overall income: In other words the 15% rate below (for 2014, filing single) only applies to the portion of your income falling between the listed numbers, not to income below it or above it: that would be calculated under the respective rates given. You can use the i1040tt tax tables to gain a sense of how this works in practice: (The linked resource is for 2014 taxes) The threshold in 2014 for the 25% rate vs 15% was $36,900. Using the linked table, if you were single and made between 36,850 and 36,900 in gross income, your tax liability before other considerations was $5,078. If you made between 36,900 and 36,950, your base tax liability was $5,088. Before investing, absolutely follow the advice in mbhunter's answer. There is no safe investment (unless you count your mattress, and even there you could find moths, theives, or simple inflation taking a chunk out of your change).  There is only maximizing your reward for a given level of risk - and there is always risk. This question should be enshrined somewhere on the Q&A site for its comprehensive list of sources for information on asset allocation.  The tag is also going to have tons of good information for you. To answer your question on what slice of the pie is devoted to what, you can check out some common portfolios given by U. S. experts for U. S. investors - these should be convertible into Australian funds. Another portfolio that is, like all those above, loosely based on Modern Portfolio Theory for maximizing reward for a given level of risk is the Gone Fishin' Portfolio. A common denominator amongst these portfolios is that they emphasize index funds over mutual funds for their long-term performance and preference lazy management (yearly rebalancing is a common suggestion as the maximum level of involvement) over active management.  You can see more Lazy Portfolios. "The goal of the single-fund with a retirement date is that they do the rebalancing for you.   They have some set of magic ratios (specific to each fund) that go something like this: Note: I completely made up those numbers and asset mix. When you invest in the ""Mutual-Fund Super Account 2025 fund"" you get the benefit that in 2015 (10 years until retirement) they automatically change your asset mix and when you hit 2025, they do it again.   You can replace the functionality by being on top of your rebalancing. That being said, I don't think you need to exactly match the fund choices they provide, just research asset allocation strategies and remember to adjust them as you get closer to retirement." "You asked 3 questions here. It's best to keep them separate as these are pretty distinct, different answers, and each might already have a good detailed answer and so might be subject to ""closed as duplicate of..."" That said, I'll address the JAGLX question (1). It's not an apples to apples comparison. This is a Life Sciences fund, i.e. a very specialized fund, investing in one narrow sector of the market. If you study market returns over time, it's easy to find sectors that have had a decade or even two that have beat the S&P by a wide margin. The 5 year comparison makes this pretty clear. For sake of comparison, Apple had twice the return of JAGLX during the past 5 years. The advisor charging 2% who was heavy in Apple might look brilliant, but the returns are not positively correlated to the expense involved. A 10 or 20 year lookback will always uncover funds or individual stocks that beat the indexes, but the law of averages suggests that the next 10 or 20 years will still appear random." I guess I wasn't clear. I want to modestly leverage (3-4x) my portfolio using options. I believe long deep-in-the-money calls would be the best way to do this? (Let me know if not.)  It's important to me that the covariance matrix from the equity portfolio scales up but doesn't fundamentally change. (I liken it to systemic change as opposed to idiosyncratic change.)   This is what I was thinking:  * For the same expiry date, find each positions lowest lambda. * Match all option to the the highest of the lowest lambda. * Adjust number of contracts to compensate for higher leverage.  I don't think this will work because if I matched the lowest lambda of options on bond etfs to my equity options they would be out-of-the-money.  By the way, thanks for your time. Yahoo's primary business isn't providing mutual fund performance data.  They aim to be convenient, but often leave something to be desired in terms of completeness. Try Morningstar instead.  Their mission is investment research. Here's a link to Morningstar's data for the fund you specified.  If you scroll down, you'll see: This is going to be a bit of a shameless plug, but I've build a portfolio tracking website to track your portfolio and be able to share it (in read-only mode) as  well. It is at http://frano.carelessmusings.com and currently in beta. Most portfolio trackers are behind a login wall and thus will lack the sharing function you are looking for. Examples of these are: Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Reuters Portfolios, MorningStart Portfolios, and many others. Another very quick and easy solution (if you are not trading too often) is a shared google docs spreadsheet. Gdocs has integration with google finance and can retrieve prices for stocks by symbol. A spreadsheet can contain the following: Symbol, Quantity, Avg. Buy Price, Price, P/L, P/L% and so on. The current price and P/L data can be functions that use the google finance API. Hope this helps, and if you check out my site please let me know what you think and what I could change.