THIS column was piqued by an article in the Financial Times that was published on March 21, titled 'The mutual fund at 100. Is it becoming obsolete?' If you have access, I found it worth reading. Let me quote the opening:

'One hundred years ago on Thursday, Edward Leffler, a former door-to-door salesman of pots and pans, revolutionized financial markets. His invention, the open-ended mutual fund, allowed retail customers to buy into a diversified portfolio of stocks and be confident that they would get a fair value when they wanted their money back. Leffler's innovation gave lower- and middle-class people an ownership stake in American capitalism.