What resources can I use to try and find out the name of the manager for a given fund?
"Yahoo Finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=VFINX+Profile Under ""Management Information""" The fund prospectus is a good place to start.
Your link is pointing to managed funds where the fees are higher, you should look at their exchange traded funds; you will note that the management fees are much lower and better reflect the index fund strategy. "You can see all the (millions) of trades per day for a US stock only if you purchase that data from the individual exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, ARCA, ...), from a commercial market data aggregator (Bloomberg, Axioma, ...), or from the Consolidated Tape Association.  In none of that data will you ever find identifying information for the traders. What you are recalling regarding the names of ""people from the company"" trading company stock is related to SEC regulations stating that people with significant ownership of company stock and/or controlling positions on the company board of directors must publicize (most of) their trades in that stock.  That information can usually be found on the company's investor relations website, or through the SEC website." You didn't identify the fund but here is the most obvious way: Some of the stocks they owned could had dividends. Therefore they would have had to pass them on to the investors. If the fund sold shares of stocks, they could have capital gains. They would have sold stocks to pay investors who sold shares. They also could have sold shares of stock to lock in gains, or to get out of positions they no longer wanted.  Therefore a fund could have dividends, and capital gains, but not have an increase in value for the year. Some investors look at how tax efficient a fund is, before investing. Why would you bet it’s Sun Capital Partners? OP said it’s a firm that specializes in buying software companies. Sun is a generalist investor. Tech-specific funds include, but are not limited to: Vista, Thoma Bravo, Insight Venture Partners, JMI Equity, etc. Street name is not what you think it is in the question.  The broker is the owner in street name.  There is no external secondary owner information.   I don't know if there is available independent verification, but if the broker is in the US and they go out of business suddenly, you can make a claim to the SIPC. Remember that unless you participate in the actual fund that these individuals offer to the public, you will not get the same returns they will. If you instead do something like, look at what Warren Buffet's fund bought/sold yesterday (or even 60 minutes ago), and buy/sell it yourself, you will face 2 obstacles to achieving their returns: 1) The timing difference will mean that the value of the stock purchased by Warren Buffet will be different for your purchase and for his purchase. Because these investors often buy large swathes of stock at once, this may create large variances for 2 reasons: (a) simply buying a large volume of a stock will naturally increase the price, as the lowest sell orders are taken up, and fewer willing sellers remain; and (b) many people (including institutional investors) may be watching what someone like Warren Buffet does, and will want to follow suit, chasing the same pricing problem. 2) You cannot buy multiple stocks as efficiently as a fund can. If Warren Buffet's fund holds, say, 50 stocks, and he trades 1 stock per day [I have absolutely no idea about what diversification exists within his fund], his per-share transaction costs will be quite low, due to share volume. Whereas for you to follow him, you would need 50 transactions upfront, + 1 per day. This may appear to be a small cost, but it could be substantial. Imagine if you wanted to invest 50k using this method - that's $1k for each of 50 companies. A $5 transaction fee would equal 1% of the value of each company invested [$5 to buy, and $5 to sell]. How does that 1% compare to the management fee charged by the actual fund available to you? In short, if you feel that a particular investor has a sound strategy, I suggest that you consider investing with them directly, instead of attempting to recreate their portfolio. Like others have said, mutual funds don't have an intraday NAV, but their ETF equivalents do. Use something like Yahoo Finance and search for the ETF.IV. For example VOO.IV. This will give you not the ETF price (which may be at a premium or discount), but the value of the underlying securities updated every 15 seconds. "Determine which fund company issues the fund. In this case, a search reveals the fund name to be Vanguard Dividend Growth Fund from Vanguard Funds. Locate information for the fund on the fund company's web site. Here is the overview page for VDIGX. In the fund information, look for information about distributions. In the case of VDIGX, the fourth tab to the right of ""Overview"" is ""Distributions"". See here. At the top: Distributions for this fund are scheduled Semi-Annually The actual distribution history should give you some clues as to when. Failing that, ask your broker or the fund company directly. On ""distribution"" vs. ""dividend"": When a mutual fund spins off periodic cash, it is generally not called a ""dividend"", but rather a ""distribution"". The terminology is different because a distribution can be made up of more than one kind of payout. Dividends are just one kind. Capital gains, interest, and return of capital are other kinds of cash that can be distributed. While cash is cash, the nature of each varies for tax purposes and so they are classified differently." I want to mention I've found 2 options for more powerful tools that can be used to manage asset allocation:  Advantages/Disadvantages: Vanguard Morningstar X-ray I hope this helps others struggling with asset allocation. Given that a mutual fund manager knows, at the end of the day, precisely how many shares/units/whatever of each investment (stock, equity, etc.) they own, plus their bank balance,  It is calculating this given. There are multiple orders that a fund manager requests for execution, some get settled [i.e. get converted into trade], the shares itself don't get into account immediately, but next day or 2 days later depending on the exchange. Similarly he would have sold quite a few shares and that would still show shares in his account. The bank balance itself will not show the funds to pay as the fund manager has purchased something ... or the funds received as the fund manager has sold something. So in general they roughly know the value ... but they don't exactly know the value and would have to factor the above variables. That's not a simple task when you are talking about multiple trades across multiple shares. Well, what I would do would be to read every journalist's article on the subject, every academic paper, and the appropriate chapters from the CFA curriculum. I'd write down everyone's name (authors and those mentioned) and then email call them for advice. I'd try to find out who those players are, what their specific philosophies are, and then find someone i thought was really smart, had an investment philosophy that I agreed with, wasn't a dick, and then I would call them.   By the way, Warren Buffett went to Columbia to learn specifically under Ben Graham. Prior to graduation, Buffett said he'd like to work at Graham Newman for free, such was the value of the education. Benjamin Graham told him (Warren), he wasn't worth that much.   You or I literally have nothing to offer these guys that they can't get somewhere else (smarts, hard work, etc) for better. I'd be humble, attentive, and humble (did I say that already). There's an intellectual honesty that comes with admitting you don't know anything (but are willing to learn) that is very much important.  That's what I would do. Did any of that help? Hey Sheehan, I believe Schwab provides this info.  None of the online free portfolio managers I know of gives you this info.  The now defunct MS Money used to have this. The best thing to do is to use a spreadsheet.  Or you could use the one I use.  http://www.moneycone.com/did-you-beat-the-market-mr-investor/ . (disclaimer: that's my blog) "If you want the answer from the horse's mouth, go to the website of the ETF or mutual find, and the expense ratio will be listed there, both on the ""Important Information"" part of the front page, as well as in the .pdf file that you click on to download the Prospectus.  Oh wait, you don't want to go the fund's website at all, just to a query site where you type in something like VFINX. hit SEARCH, and out pops the expense ratio for the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund? Well, have you considered MorningStar?" A general mutual fund's exact holdings are not known on a day-to-day basis, and so technical tools must work with inexact data. Furthermore, the mutual fund shares' NAV depends on lots of different shares that it holds, and the  results of the kinds of analyses that one can do for a single stock must be commingled to produce something analogous for the fund's NAV. In other words, there is plenty of shooting in the dark going on. That being said, there are plenty of  people who claim to do such analyses and will gladly sell you their results (actually, Buy, Hold, Sell recommendations) for whole fund families (e.g. Vanguard) in the form of a monthly or weekly Newsletter delivered by US Mail (in the old days) or electronically (nowadays). Some people who subscribe to such newsletters swear by them, while others swear at them and don't renew their subscriptions; YMMV. I don't think that you will be able to find a list of every owner for a given stock. There are probably very few people who would know this. One source would be whoever sends out the shareholder meeting mailers.  I suspect that the company itself would know this, the exchange to a lesser extent, and possibly the brokerage houses to a even lesser extent. Consider these resources: