March 26, 2004
First let me say that this type of personalized info is great to get as an individual investor at the time of sale. Allows a clear understanding of projected costs. Better description of the methods of creation, and transmittal of the info is desired by this website, and in instructions to the brokers firms. How it is transmitted to the buyer is crucial. Disclosure of this information at point of sale will be cumbersome to brokers unless it is an internet based sale. Verbal disclosure will not be understood by many buyers, without clear, published data on these funds being provided in advance of the buy attempt. This does not mean that it should be waived as a requirement, rather that added preparation / materials should be made available to the typical broker assisted buyer. Automated phone entry sale mechanisms of disclosure should also be addressed
Many good web based fund search engines provided by brokers allow this type of cost screening before the attempted buy/sale, which can provide a much better disclosure of info, and allow advance comparisons which will lead to better, user focused competition and maybe take the pressure off of the SEC. These screening mechanisms should be mandated to forcast costs of a hypothetical user selected sale of 5,000 or 10,000 dollars or whatever.