Where can I find what individual stocks make up a mutual fund and the
timing of the buying and the sellling of such funds?

Thanks for Asking!

Try Yahoo's Funds Screener at:

http://screen.yahoo.com/funds.html

You can locate mutual funds by type, performance returns, and many
other criteria. When the listing of funds is displayed, click on the
Holdings link in the Other Information section to see the portfolio
breakdown. Portfolio listings are updated quarterly.

The data on the Yahoo site is provided by Morningstar. Their own Funds
category website is available for search at:

http://www.morningstar.com/Cover/Funds.html

You should also be able to obtain fund historical data and in depth
investment information directly from the Fund Manager. As an example,
see the information available about the Janus Core Equity Fund listed
here:

http://ww4.janus.com/Janus/Retail/FundDetail?fundID=12

For this example, the Fund Manager's commentary about the investment
strategy is available by visiting:

http://ww4.janus.com/Janus/Retail/StaticPage?jsp=Funds/Updates/CoreEquityFundCommentary.jsp

Search terms used:
"mutual funds" composition

I hope these tools lead you to the information you're seeking. Thank
you for using Google Answers.

~larre-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by larre-ga on 26 May 2002 00:01 PDT

Also see these Mutual Fund investment information websites:

Investment Basics for the Do-It-Yourselfer, by MotlyFool:

http://www.fool.com/School/Basics/InvestingBasics.htm

Research tool from MSN.com

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/research/wizards/FRW.asp?Funds=1

Additional resosurces may be found in the Google Directory:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Investing/Mutual_Funds/

~L

---

Clarification of Answer by larre-ga on 26 May 2002 00:22 PDT

"When to buy" information is offered by a number of sources, among
them:

http://www.stockcharts.com/commentary/scottmc/scottmc19991213.html
http://www.ivillage.com/money/departments/investing/articles/0,10509,165353_218296,00.html
http://www.msmoney.com/mm/investing/portfolio_basics/buy_sell_mutualfund.htm
http://www.ehow.com/ehow/ehow.jsp?index=1024&id=2799

~L

Merely by inputing (typing in) the name of any mutual fund company in
a standard search engine you can probably get their 800 number and you
can call them and ask them to send you a paper copy of a specific 
fund's holdings. In the case of an Index Fund this might run to
several hundred stocks in a stock
fund. Likewise for a bond fund. Morningstar and Bloomberg are your
best bets for
stock research. Also Kiplinger's (monthly finance magazine) has
columns on mutual funds as does Mutual Funds magazine. They both have
online sites that you can visit. If you need help, contact Google
Answers again and we'll answer
your questions; this is a broad and complex area. There are socially
conscious
funds, if that is your concern, such as Pax.

Mutual funds are also required to file a complete list of their
holdings semiannually with the SEC on form N-SAR. You might want to
check out http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/mutualfundsrpt.htm for
those filings.

However the data available through morningstar is at least as good and
often more frequently reported than the data reported to the SEC.
Morningstar's Principia Pro database CD is one of the best products
out there for doing this kind of analysis - it is updated monthly.
What is available online from morningstar.com is a subset of this
data.