Juniper stands on a hilltop beside a big woven basket

Juniper's Basket of Funds

A story about a fund of funds

FundOpsHQ

Juniper sits on a wooden bench with a soft round cushion on her lap

This book belongs to

Juniper stands all alone at the door of a little round village house with a windmill behind it on a hill

Juniper the dormouse looked after a small village savings club. Its members wanted to put some savings into private funds, which buy and grow companies over many years.

1Read more

Juniper stands small and alone in front of a huge closed iron gate in a tall stone wall

But the best funds asked for a big sum at once, more than the whole club had saved. And some were so popular that they were already full.

2

Juniper stands beside a tall calm stag with wide branching antlers and a long coat

Then she met Alder the stag. He ran a fund of funds: one fund that puts its money into many other funds.

3Read more

The tall stag with wide branching antlers opens a huge iron gate in a tall stone wall while Juniper watches happily

Alder knew many fund managers, and his team spent their days checking them. He could get into funds that the club could never get into alone.

4Read more

Juniper looks up at a big tree with many branches

By promising a small sum to Alder's fund, the club would own a slice of twenty funds, and through them, hundreds of companies. If one did badly, others could do well.

5

Juniper plants a row of acorns in a garden

Alder did not put all the money in at once. He picked new funds each year for a few years, so not everything started in a good year or a bad one.

6

Juniper stands in a garden looking at a row of young trees of different heights

The year a fund makes its first investment is called its vintage year. Some vintages turn out better than others, and nobody can know which ahead of time.

7Read more

Juniper looks at a small two-shelf wooden stand

There was a cost. Each of the twenty funds took fees and a share of any profits, and Alder's fund took a smaller fee of its own on top: two layers of fees.

8Read more

Juniper sits at a small wooden desk by a window at night with a candle

Juniper thought hard. Was Alder's help worth the extra fee? For a small club with nobody to check funds, she decided that it was.

9

In the first years, Alder's fund asked for the club's money a little at a time, as the twenty funds needed it, and little came back. Juniper had expected that.

10

Then, year by year, money came back as the funds sold the companies they had grown, and Alder passed it on. Some funds did very well, some fine, and one poorly.

11

Juniper sits smiling beside a big woven basket brimming with round apples on a plain wooden table

It does not always turn out this way. But this time, after both layers of fees, the club got back more than it had put in, slow and steady, as it had hoped.

12

Juniper sits on a chair at the end of a long wooden table with a big round cake on it

At the club's supper that winter, Juniper told the members how their savings had grown. Then they all had cake, and nobody stayed up too late.

13

Juniper asleep with her eyes closed curled up in a cosy armchair

A note

The words in this book are real ones, explained simply. The animals and examples are made up, and real terms vary from fund to fund. It is not advice. The pictures were drawn with an AI image model and checked by hand.

Free from FundOpsHQ · fundopshq.com/books