MUTUAL FUNDS, SECTOR FUNDS, ETFs & INDEX FUNDS

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

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MUTUAL FUNDS, SECTOR FUNDS, ETFs AND INDEX FUNDS

SPONSOR: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

here are many ways for a doctor, osteopath, podiatrist or dentist to financially invest. Traditionally, this meant picking individual stocks and bonds. Today, there are many other ways to purchase securities en mass. For example:

MUTUAL FUND: A regulated investment company that manages a portfolio of securities for its shareholders.

Open End Mutual Funds: An investment company that invests money in accordance with specific objectives on behalf of investors. Fund assets expand or contract based on investment performance, new investments and redemptions. Trade at Net Asset Value or the price the fund shares scheduled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trade. NAV can change on a daily basis. Therefore, per-share NAV can, as well.

Closed End Mutual Funds: Older than open end mutual funds and more complex. A CEMF is an investment company that registers shares SEC regulations and is traded in securities markets at prices determined by investments. Shares of closed-end funds can be purchased and sold anytime during stock market hours. CEMF managers don’t need to maintain a cash reserve to redeem or / repurchase shares from investors. This can reduce performance drag that may otherwise be attributable to holding cash. CEMFs may be able to offer higher returns due to the heavier use of leverage [debt]. They are subject to volatility, less liquid than open-end funds, available only through brokers and may sells at a heavily discount or premium to [NAV] determined by subtracting its liabilities from its assets. The fund’s per-share NAV is then obtained by dividing NAV by the number of shares outstanding.  .

Sector Mutual Funds: Sector funds are a type of mutual fund or Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) that invests in a specific sector or industry such as technology, healthcare, energy, finance, consumer goods, or real estate. Sector funds focus on a particular industry, allowing investors to gain targeted exposure to specific market areas. The goal is to outperform the overall market by investing in companies within a specific sector that is expected to perform well. However, they are also more susceptible to market fluctuations and specific sector risks, making them a more specialized and potentially higher-risk investment option.

STOCKS, BONDS AND MUTUAL FUNDS: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2025/06/11/stocks-bonds-and-commodities/

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EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS:  ETFs are a type of fund that owns various kinds of securities, often of one type. For example, a stock ETF holds stocks, while a bond ETF holds bonds. One share of the ETF gives buyers ownership of all the stocks or bonds in the fund. If an ETF held 100 stocks, then those who owned the fund would own a stake – albeit a very tiny one – in each of those 100 stocks.

ETFs are typically passively managed, meaning that the fund usually holds a fixed number of securities based on a specific preset index of investments. These are tax efficient. In contrast, many mutual funds are actively managed, with professional investors trying to select the investments that will rise and fall.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is perhaps the world’s best-known index, and it forms the basis of many ETFs. Other popular indexes include the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations [NASDAQ] Composite Index.

ETFs based on these funds are called Index Funds and just buy and hold whatever is in the index and make no active trading decisions. ETFs trade on a stock exchange during the day, unlike mutual funds that trade only after the market closes. With an ETF you can place a trade whenever the market is open and know exactly the price you’re paying for the fund.

ETFs: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2025/01/06/etfs-alternatively-weighted-investments/

INDEX FUNDS: Index funds mirror the performance of benchmarks like the DJIA. These passive investments are an unimaginative way to invest. Passive index funds tracking market benchmarks accounted for just 21% of the U.S. equity fund market in 2012. By 2024, passive index funds had grown to about half of all U.S. fund assets. This rise of passive funds has come as they often outperform their actively managed peers. According to the widely followed S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) scorecards, about 9 out of 10 actively managed funds didn’t match the returns of the S&P 500 benchmark in the past 15 years.

ASSESSMENT

Investing in individual stocks is psychologically and academically different than investing in the above funds, according to psychiatrist and colleague Ken Shubin-Stein MD, MPH, MS, CFA who is a professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business  When you buy shares of a company, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. If the company does well, your investment will go up in value. If the company does poorly, your investment will go down. Fund diversification helps reduce this risk.

CONCLUSION

Investing in the above fund types will help mitigate single company security risk.

References: 

1. Fenton, Charles, F: Non-Disclosure Agreements and Physician Restrictive Covenants. In, Marcinko, DE and Hetico, HR: Risk Management, Liability Insurance, and Asset Protection Strategies for Doctors and Advisors [Best Practices from Leading Consultants and Certified Medical Planners™]. Productivity Press, New York, 2015.

Readings:

1. Marcinko, DE and Hetico, HR; Comprehensive Financial Planning Strategies for Doctors and Advisors [Best Practices from Leading Consultants and Certified Medical Planners™] Productivity Press, New York, 2017 

2. Marcinko, DE: Dictionary of Health Economics and Finance. Springer Publishing Company, NY 2006

3.  https://www.ft.com

4. Shubin-Stein, Kenneth: Unifying the Psychological and Financial Planning Divide [Holistic Life Planning, Behavioral Economics, Trading Addiction and the Art of Money]. Marcinko, DE and Hetico, HR; Comprehensive Financial Planning Strategies for Doctors and Advisors [Best Practices from Leading Consultants and Certified Medical Planners™] Productivity Press, New York, 2017

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Understanding Behavioral Finance and Economics

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

Historical Review

By: Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA, MEd, CMP™

By: Eugene Schmuckler; PhD, MBA, CTS

By: Dr. Kenneth H. Shubin-Stein, CFA

By: Richard B. Wagner; JD, CFP®

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Validating the emerging alliance between psychology (human behavior) and finance (economics) is the fact that two Americans won the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s, 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Their research was nothing short of an explanation for the idiosyncrasies incumbent in human financial decision-making outcomes.

The Pioneers

Daniel Kahneman, PhD, professor of psychology at Princeton University, and Vernon L. Smith, PhD, professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., shared the prize for work that provided insight on everything from stock market bubbles, to regulating utilities, and countless other economic activities. In several cases, the winners tried to explain apparent financial paradoxes.

The Experiments

For example, Professor Kahneman made the economically puzzling discovery that most of his subjects would make a 20-minute trip to buy a calculator for $10 instead of $15, but would not make the same trip to buy a jacket for $120 instead of $125, saving the same $5.

Initially, in the 1960’s, Smith set out to demonstrate how economic theory worked in the laboratory (in vitro), while Kahneman was more interested in the ways economic theory mis-predicted people in real-life (in-vivo). He tested the limits of standard economic choice theory in predicting the actions of real people, and his work formalized laboratory techniques for studying economic decision making, with a focus on trading and bargaining.

Academe’

Later, Smith and Kahneman together were among the first economists to make experimental data a cornerstone of academic output. Their studies included people playing games of cooperation and trust, and simulating different types of markets in a laboratory setting. Their theories assumed that individuals make decisions systematically, based on preferences and available information, in a way that changes little over time, or in different contexts. By the late 1970’s, Richard H. Thaler, PhD, an economist at the University of Chicago also began to perform behavioral experiments further suggesting irrational wrinkles in standard financial theory and behavior, enhancing the still embryonic but increasingly popular theories of Kahneman and Smith.

Other Pioneers

Other economists’ laboratory experiments used ideas about competitive interactions pioneered by game theorists like John Forbes Nash Jr., PhD, who shared the Nobel in 1994, as points of reference. But, Kahneman and Smith often concentrated on cases where people’s actions depart from the systematic, rational strategies that Nash envisioned. Psychologically, this was all a precursor to the informal concept of life planning.

Enter the Financial Planners

Of course, comprehensive financial planners have always consulted with their clients regarding their goals and objectives, hopes and dreams, but typically from the point of view of money goals, rather than life ideals or business goals. The absence, or presence of biological and/or psychological reasons for them was never conceived, nor discussed. But, quantifying future subjective and objective goals, and doing a technical analysis of factors such as risk tolerance, age, insurance, tax, investing, retirement and estate planning needs, has certainly been the norm, especially for Certified Medical Planners (CMP).

Assessmentcmp-logo

Life planning and behavioral finance then, as proposed for physicians and integrated by the Institute of Medical Business Advisors (iMBA) is somewhat similar. Its uniqueness emanates from a holistic union of personal financial planning and medical practice management, solely for the healthcare space.  Unlike pure life planning, pure financial planning, or pure management theory, it is both a quantitative and qualitative “hard and soft” science. It has an ambitious economic, psychological and managerial niche value proposition never before proposed and codified, while still representing an evolving philosophy. Its’ zealous practitioners are called Certified Medical Planners (CMPs).

www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

Conclusion

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