"I don't know if we're seeing the demise of actively managed mutual funds - if we are seeing a big change — but a lot of people seem to have decided to stay away from stock funds." That's what Lipper senior analyst Tom Roseen told WSJ Fund Track reporter Sam Mamudi. Whether Roseen is correct is the billion dollar question for fund industry executives.

In the column, Mamudi himself doesn't provide any hard evidence that investors won't come back to funds. Indeed he thinks they will return -- just too late to do them any good. Recounting the latest fund flow data, which has been generally positive for the past 12 months, Mamudi muses that investors may have been overly cautious in re-entering the stock market.

Regarding investors' reluctance, Mamudi spoke with Todd Rosenbluth, Standard & Poor's mutual fund analyst, and Tom Roseen, senior analyst at research firm Lipper Inc. He also talked to Barry James, president and CEO of Ohio-based James Investment Research. 

Edited by: Stephanie Bernhard


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