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Investment Company Institute

Robert Abbott , , ,

The Investment Company Institute provides information about the American industry as a whole, and is a useful reference when you want the big picture on mutual funds & ETFs.

By: Robert F. Abbott, a freelance writer and author of Big Macs & Our Pensions

Investment Company InstituteSometimes you need to look past particular mutual funds or ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), and find out something about the industry as a whole. For example, you might ask yourself, “Is the mutual fund business growing or contracting?” Such questions help you make better investment decisions.

In the United States, companies in the funds industry belong to an organization called the Investment Company Institute (ICI). Other countries will have similar organizations; you can find them by using an online search engine.

Personally, I find it interesting to scan through the Investment Company Institute’s annual Fact Book. Looking on the first page of the 2016 edition, I see the following information about the people who have bought mutual funds and ETFs (as well as a couple of other types of funds which we’ll name later):

Investment Company Institute

We can quickly see that some 93-million individual Americans (roughly 29% of the population) own at least one mutual fund or ETF. We also see that they belong to 55-million households; that’s about 44% of all households. We also see that each household owns an average of 3 different funds, and that the average value of their holdings is about $120,000.
Also on that page, we can get an overview of what types of funds they own:

Investment Company Institute

From this, we see that while ETFs have gained some market share, and get quite a bit of media attention, mutual funds still get most of the investment dollars. Note as well that Americans own about half of the world’s $37.1 trillion dollars worth of funds (open-ended funds refers to mutual funds, ETFs, and institutional investments such as pension plans).

Earlier, I noted that the Investment Company Institute also represents a couple of other types of funds. They’re listed in this table: Closed-end funds and Unit investment trusts. While they manage a lot of money, they’re relatively small when compared with mutual funds and ETFs.

That’s a quick introduction to the Investment Company Institute, and what it does. If you want information about American holdings of mutual funds and ETFs, this could be one of the first places to which you turn.

Other free articles onsite include: High Dividend Mutual Funds

Robert Abbott

Robert F. Abbott has been investing his family’s accounts since 1995, and in 2010 added options, mainly covered calls and collars with long stocks.In his other writing, Abbott explores how the middle class has come to own much of big business through pension funds and mutual funds, what management guru Peter Drucker called the Unseen Revolution. In Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits?, the first of a series of booklets on this subject, he looks at the ownership of McDonald’s and what that means for middle class retirement income.In an eclectic career, Robert Abbott was a radio news writer and announcer, a newsletter writer and publisher, a farmer, a telephone operator, and a construction worker. When not working, he has been a busy volunteer, which includes more than a decade of leadership roles at the Airdrie Festival of Lights, one of North America’s leading holiday light displays. He lives in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada.