Financial investment is a game of risks and rewards, the object being to minimize the former and maximize the latter. Concentrating investment capital carries the greatest potential for high dividends,1 but also involves enormous risk as the failure of one or two companies could seriously damage your portfolio.2

One solution to this problem is mutual funds. Pooling the resources of a group of investors in the interest of sharing the risks and diversifying3 their portfolios, this system distributes the capital over a wide range of stocks and bonds and spreads the risks over the group. This reduces the impact of the occasional failure. Moreover, trading as a single entity significantly reduces trading costs.

The first official mutual fund, the Massachusetts Investors Trust, was established in 1924. It experienced growth of more than 700 percent in its first year, and other success stories followed. The stock market crash of 1929 crippled the investment climate for some time. However it provided the impetus to create the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and pass the Investment Company Act of 1940. This set the guidelines that fund companies follow to this day.

Nowadays, with 83 million investors and 7 trillion dollars in assets in the United States alone, mutual funds are a very popular choice for those seeking a skilled intermediary between their savings and the volatile4 marketplace.

1. dividend n. 股息

2. portfolio n. 有价证券或其目录

3. diversify v. 使多样化

4. volatile a. 易变的

金融投资是一种风险和赢利的游戏，其目标是将前者降至最低，后者最大限度地提高。集中投资的资本可能会带来高额股利的最大潜力，但同时也伴随着巨大的风险，因为一两家公司的破产就有可能让你的有价证券损失惨重。

解决这个问题的一个办法是建立共同基金。为了分担风险和多元经营有价证券，可以募集一组投资者的资金，在大范围的股票和债券上对它们进行分配，分散组内投资人的风险。这样就能减少偶发的失利带来的冲击。此外，以单一实体进行交易大大降低交易成本。

第一个官方共同基金——马萨诸塞投资者信托建立于1924年。这个共同基金第一年就扩大了七倍多，以后的成绩也不错。1929年美国股市暴跌，投资气候因此而低迷瘫痪了好一段时间，但也因此而推动了美国证券交易管理委员会的创立和1940年《投资公司法案》的通过，制定了投资公司至今仍然遵循的方针。

现在，共同基金仅在美国就有8300万投资者和7万亿美元的资产，对于那些想寻找有经验的中介在他们的存款和变幻莫测的市场之间起媒介作用的人来说，共同基金是一项非常受欢迎的选择。