According to Morningstar data, the average expense ratio for funds in 2017 when weighted for the amount the funds have in assets dipped to 0.52%, or a decline of 8% from the 2016 average, reports Ryan Vlastelica for MarketWatch.
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The cheaper fees may be a response to the increased popularity of passive funds, which just try to passively reflect the performance of an underlying index like the S&P 500. The passive nature does not require too much hand holding, compared to an actively managed fund where components are selected at the discretion of a manager or trade team.
“While Fidelity, which manages $2.5 trillion, is best known for its actively-managed funds, in the past few years it has aggressively gone after rivals in the “passive” index arena, and now has about $400 billion in index mutual funds according to Bloomberg,” reports Zero Hedge.
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