Introduction to Shades of Growth

Not everyone loves a sale. After all, sales can be messy and tiring and you can pick up some real duds along the way, whether it's a sale on shoes or refrigerators or an old house that has dry rot underneath the hardwood floors.

Value and growth are often considered opposites in investing, and for good reason. Most growth managers are more interested in a company's earnings or revenues and a stock's potential for price appreciation than they are in finding a bargain. Thus, growth funds will usually have much higher average price/earnings and price/book ratios than value funds, as the managers are willing to pay more for a company's future prospects. Value managers want to buy stocks that are cheap relative to the company's current worth or some other benchmark.

Of course, growth managers have different styles, just like value managers do. And not surprisingly, those styles have a big effect on how a fund performs and how risky it is.