Fido Drops Freedom Fund Fee

Fidelity Investments has dropped the management fee on its Freedom family of mutual funds, date-targeted retirement funds which allocate investments in other Fidelity funds. The firm has dropped the 0.08% charge on the 10 funds, MarketWatch reports.

"That isn't much, but given that Fidelity is already collecting fees on the underlying funds, and the fact that its two largest no-load competitors are doing fine without the fee, it's tough to justify," Kunal Kapoor, director of research at Morningstar, wrote in recent commentary.

The Freedom funds are part of a trend to capture assets by focusing on investors' investment horizon and risk tolerance. Fidelity has led the pack in such "life cycle" funds, with a third of the market share at the end of 2004, according to Lipper.

However, unlike other low-cost competitors Vanguard Group and T. Rowe Price, Fidelity had charged the eight-basis-point management fee over and above the fee embedded in the underlying funds.

The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.