Affluent investors say they're increasingly dissatisfied with their mutual funds' long-term performance and inconsistent returns.

In fact, only 11 of 38 top fund families managed to create meaningful customer loyalty, according to a new report released Wednesday by Cogent Research LLC.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based market researcher surveyed 4,000 wealthy mutual-fund investors. It specializes in conducting independent studies of markets such as financial services, health and consumer goods.

'The findings show it's difficult for fund companies to produce consistent returns that investors can be pleased with,' Chris Brown, managing director of Cogent, said.

But some do, he added. 'There's a small group of firms that has been able to generate sufficient long-term returns to build strong investor loyalty,' Brown said.

The study showed Vanguard Group with a wide lead over its rivals in terms of investor loyalty. 'Some firms might want to please advisers rather than the end-investor,' Brown said."

See if your holdings have earned their way to your personal "Big Dance." When you find a fund that is "on the bubble" -- meaning it's not an obvious choice to buy again today -- you'll have a "watch list" of funds that may, in time, deserve the boot.

The conference the fund plays in. In hoops, there are "power conferences" -- where a 6th-place team might make the tournament -- and "midmajor conferences," where only the tournament champion goes. In mutual funds, there are asset classes. Your search for a fund should start by deciding the type of assets you want to own.

Conference record. In basketball, it's important to be in the top half of your league. In mutual funds, it's about being consistently in the top half of the fund's peer group, and being in the top one-third over longer time periods.

Quality wins. This is the NCAA's way of saying that you beat good opponents, and a mutual fund's way of showing that it performed well in tough times.

Strength of schedule. In basketball, you want to play tough opponents rather than cupcakes. In mutual funds, it's not a bad idea to favor a fund that has results over a lot of time periods so that you can judge it based on everything from the last quarter to the last decade or more.

Power rankings. In basketball, this is the computer's attempt to suggest that one team is better than another; in mutual funds, it's star ratings, numerical rankings and more."

If you are just beginning to save for retirement there are a few basic rules to follow. First off, you want to contribute the same percentage of your salary to your account as the company match. So if your employer pitches in 6% you should, too, regardless of how much belt tightening you have to do. If you don't, you're just throwing away a cash gift from your firm. And it's always smart to increase your payments every year in stride with whatever annual salary increase you get. Financial advisors like to see clients contributing 10% of their annual salaries.

The simplest investment to start with is a low-cost index fund. These no-frill options — found in every 401(k) plan — will track the returns of a benchmark like the Standard & Poor's 500 index. If you're saving in a brokerage account, make sure the index fund has an expense ratio around 0.2% a year, or about $20 for every $1,000 you invest. Anything over 0.5% is too expensive. If you think you need a big wad of cash to get started... well, you don't. Some firms like T. Rowe Price will waive their minimum-investment requirements on a wide selection of funds if savers agree to invest, say, $50 a month. Under the "Fund Quicklist" section on its web site, the Mutual Fund Education Alliance lists 1,800 funds that have these low minimums. We would suggest coupling an S&P 500 index fund with one that tracks international stocks, at least until you become more comfortable with investing.

Many funds have rolled out alternative mutual funds and ETFs recently, and it is instructive to examine how they have performed on Tuesday's big down day.

One in particular, the Claymore Sabrient Defender Index (DEF), was designed to "Defend" against down days. The specifics of the methodology are proprietary, but in general terms, the fund is rebalanced quarterly by looking back at the last quarter and seeing what did well on the down days. So how well did it play on D day?

An awful -3.00%."

To some extent, holding two or more similarly managed funds holding like but not identical stocks (i.e. large cap Canadian) could be considered simply as an exercise in diversification, but it doesn't take long before portfolio dilution (or "di-worsification") kicks in. This is where the portfolio risks becoming more index-like but with active management fees. That will doom any portfolio to long-term underperformance.

The industry's bloated line-up of products is to blame. If we look at the entire fund industry as one gigantic portfolio, Canadians are holding hundreds and hundreds of unique funds just to invest in Canadian stocks. I would never recommend that any investor spread money among hundreds of funds -- particularly in such a small asset class. And I have opined in the past that at least 90% of funds are probably not worthy of investors' dollars. Accordingly, investors in aggregate are bound to underperform.

Diversification is a critical component of sound portfolio construction. Investors must strike the delicate balance of having sufficient diversification (to reduce reliance on any one stock) with the need to stay focused enough to make active management worth paying for. Dilution (or excessive diversification) can result in an expensive, index-like portfolio. Too focused a portfolio can incur too much risk (making success more uncertain)."