Style investment becomes less important as time period grows

One look at the early-2002 performance of stock mutual funds makes you glad fund investing is strictly a long-term proposition. Nobody is getting rich short-term in any category of domestic stock funds ' small, medium, or large-cap funds, growth, value or blend. As of mid-February the only variation is in the size of the year-to-date loss. This is no fun for investors who learned in the 1990s to discriminate among 'styles' of stocks. The way to be hip with your stock funds was to figure out which sector of the market would attract the hot money next. These days there is no game. Stoc...