You can’t make up things like this if you tried. Jonathan Chevreau recently wrote about the second annual Lipper awards that gives new meaning to celebrating mediocrity. In addition to four overall awards, thirty (30) Lipper Awards were given to mutual funds in each of the 1 year, 3 year and 5 year categories and a modest twenty (20) were given out in the 10 year category. Awards are given for every possible combination of categories - for example, there is Canadian Neutral Balanced, Canadian Equity Balanced, Canadian Fixed Income Balanced, Tactical Balanced, Global Equity Balanced, … well, you get the idea.
Now, for the really funny part in The Wealthy Boomer post: “if you’re such a sad-sack fund company that you couldn’t muster up a single win in the 113 categories, there may yet be hope for you. You can order a large Lipper trophy for just $155, a medium one for $119 or a small one for just $95″. Yep, “the instantly recognisable symbol of fund performance and success” can be ordered on this website.
No wonder, Tom Bradley of Steadyhand mutual funds is ecstatic about winning a coveted award for Best Mutual Fund Performance for the Week of July 23rd.
Bookmark: del.icio.us Digg StumbleUpon
6 responses so far ↓
1 Four Pillars // Apr 17, 2008 at 8:26 am
Funny stuff.
This reminds me of the time I went to a rib festival (yes, there is such a thing) in Burlington. Basically there are a bunch of stands set up where you can buy ribs from the various restaurants - in front of each one was a sign listing all their various awards:
“Best ribs - Burlington festival 2005″
“Tastiest ribs - Mississauga festival 2006″
and so on - basically the festival just moves around all summer and hands out awards…
The ribs were good.
2 FinancialJungle // Apr 17, 2008 at 12:54 pm
PF blogs award night, anyone? I think Money Gardener had one a while back.
3 Canadian Capitalist // Apr 17, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Mike: That’s pretty funny and I’ll bet the ribs vendors knew the joke, so it’s all in good spirit. With mutual funds these guys are really serious! Unbelievable.
FJ: Great idea. We can invent categories like “the best blog post for the eighty first day of the year that is not a Monday”. It would be a blast. And if a blogger didn’t win, we could allow trophies to be purchased. We can’t charge 95 bucks though because no blogger will buy!
4 Jon202 // Apr 17, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Baah, Financial Blog Awards, don’t be ridiculous! Anyone can put a flashy .Gif star on their site. Now, a Hall of Fame for outstanding reader responses is something that’s *LONG* overdue!
5 Nerd Money // Apr 17, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Ha! I read this article earlier this week and I had to laugh. For the personal finance awards I can just picture it. I’ll get the “Best blog with under ten posts” award. Have to go prepare the speech and make room in my side bar for a gold star.
6 squawkfox // Apr 18, 2008 at 2:17 am
What fund won for highest MER? (snicker)
Leave a Comment