Fund prospectus
Also known as: prospectus
A fund prospectus is the legal document a or must provide to investors describing its investment strategy, risks, fees, past performance, and other key details before, or at the point of, purchase. It is filed with and reviewed by and is the primary disclosure document regulators require every registered fund to make available to the public.
The prospectus spells out what the fund actually invests in and how, including its stated investment objective, the types of securities it can hold, and any limits on its strategy, along with a plain language summary of the specific risks that come with that strategy. It also lays out the fund's full fee structure, including the , any , and other charges like a , presented in a standardized fee table that makes it possible to compare costs across different funds.
Most investors today receive a shortened summary prospectus rather than the full, lengthy legal document, though the full prospectus and an additional document called the statement of additional information remain available on request and are filed publicly with . Reading the prospectus, even just the summary version, is one of the most direct ways an investor can verify that a fund actually does what its name or marketing suggests, since fund names can sometimes be broader or narrower than the actual the fund holds.