The Sound Mind Investing Fund (SMIFX) is a pure Upgrading fund. The SMI Managed Volatility Fund (SMIVX) uses the same Upgrading approach, but attempts to reduce volatility and risk by adding a hedging component. That hedging component acts somewhat like an insurance policy — it is designed to reduce losses when the market performs poorly. But like any insurance, it costs money, which means it is also likely to reduce overall gains somewhat when the market performs well. SMIVX is designed for investors who want to utilize Upgrading but are willing to sacrifice a bit of upside potential in order to reduce their downside risk.

You can get a prospectus and account registration form by downloading them here, or email your request to us for information to be sent through the U.S. Mail. They are also available by calling toll-free 1-877-SMI-FUND. After reading the prospectus carefully, fill out the account registration form and mail it with your initial investment. The SMI Funds are available at most leading brokerages.

Send your investment to:

The Sound Mind Investing Funds are available for purchase at most leading brokerages. To request the Funds be added at a brokerage, email info@smifund.com.

Call 1-877-764-3863 between 9am and 5pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday to speak to a shareholder services representative about your account. Have your account number ready. You can also call this number 24 hours a day for current share price information and account balances. In addition, you can access your account information via this website - if you have not signed up already, you simply need to complete a brief registration process, after which we'll mail you your login information. Click here to get started.

Yes. The Sound Mind Investing Funds are no-load mutual funds, so you do not pay a sales charge when you purchase shares. If you redeem your shares within 90 days of purchase, you will be charged a redemption fee of 2.00%. See the current prospectus for more information.

You can open an account with the Sound Mind Investing Funds with a $5,000 minimum initial investment.

Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and Uniform Gift/Transfer to Minors Accounts (UGMA/UTMA) may be opened with a $2,500 minimum initial investment. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts may be opened with a $2,000 minimum initial investment.

Those who invest $100 or more per month through the Automatic Investment Plan may open an account with a $1,000 minimum initial investment.

Yes. You can open an IRA with a $2,500 initial investment, transfer an existing IRA account from another institution, or even consolidate several existing IRA accounts into one of the Sound Mind Investing Funds' IRA accounts. The Funds offer Traditional, Roth and SEP IRAs.

Yes. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts may be opened with a $2,000 minimum initial investment. Uniform Gift/Transfer to Minors Accounts (UGMA/UTMA) may be opened with a $2,500 minimum initial investment.

Many news and financial web sites report daily share prices using the fund ticker symbols (SMIFX and SMIVX). While most financial web sites will have the daily share prices for the Funds each evening, many newspapers will not report them. This is because, as funds-of-funds, calculating the daily share price each evening requires us to wait to receive the pricing information from each underlying fund owned. As a result, the Funds are often unable to meet the early reporting deadline required to be included in many newspapers.

The Upgrading strategy has been advocated for many years by the Sound Mind Investing newsletter and has been followed by thousands of newsletter subscribers to implement an upgrading portfolio on their own. However, prior to the launch of the SMI Funds, no vehicle existed for investors who wanted to follow the newsletter's upgrading recommendations, but didn't want the responsibility of implementing the strategy on their own. In early 2004, the newsletter's publisher (Austin Pryor) and executive editor (Mark Biller) began to seriously consider starting an upgrading mutual fund, but ultimately concluded the time demands would be too significant to do so without a partner. In early 2005, a financial management firm named Omnium Capital contacted the newsletter about starting a fund based on the Upgrading investing strategy. After much deliberation, the decision was made to go forward, and Austin, Mark and the Omnium principals formed SMI Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisory firm (the "Adviser"). The Adviser then began the long process of starting the Sound Mind Investing Fund (SMIFX) and serving as the Fund's investment adviser. The SMI Managed Volatility Fund (SMIVX) was launched a year later to offer investors exposure to the Upgrading strategy within a structure that attempts to reduce the volatility of the Upgrading strategy.

Mark Biller, who is the Sound Mind Investing newsletter's executive editor, is a principal of the Adviser and serves as the Funds' senior portfolio manager. He has worked alongside Austin Pryor, publisher of the Sound Mind Investing newsletter, since January of 2000. So you can rest assured that the decisions made by Mark in managing the Funds are in keeping with the Upgrading philosophy advocated in the SMI newsletter. Although Austin is not involved in the day-to-day investment management of the Funds, he does have a significant ownership stake in the Adviser.

That's a decision to be made based on your specific needs and financial plan, in consultation with your financial planner if you have one. Here are a few factors to consider in making that decision.

Upgrading on your own with the newsletter will generally be less expensive. The Funds charge an extra layer of expenses on top of the expenses being paid to the underlying funds. You're basically paying a fee to have the Funds' managers upgrade for you.

While the Funds charges an extra layer of fees, they do offer certain advantages over upgrading on your own. First, it's much easier and more convenient than managing your own Upgrading portfolio. Plus, as an institutional investor the Funds have a wider selection of underlying funds to choose from: they can often invest in load-waived funds and closed funds, funds with high minimum investment requirements, and institutional share classes. The Funds can often save on transaction costs and the expenses of the underlying funds. Plus you get daily professional management of the portfolios. Additionally, the hedging techniques used by the SMI Managed Volatility Fund are very difficult for most individual investors to duplicate on their own. But these advantages may or may not be enough to offset the additional expense of having the Funds upgrade on your behalf.

The Funds were designed primarily to help people who want to benefit from Upgrading, but don't want to keep up with the process on their own. If that describes you, the Funds will likely be an attractive alternative to manually upgrading in your own portfolio.

Sometimes they will, but many times they won't. The Funds select which funds to buy and sell by utilizing the same basic methodology as the newsletter uses to determine which funds to recommend to its subscribers. However, there are some key differences between how the Funds will operate and how newsletter subscribers can upgrade on their own. For one thing, the Funds will likely have access at no additional cost to a wide variety of load-waived funds and institutional share classes that the newsletter does not recommend and newsletter subscribers cannot access on their own. This means the Funds are "shopping" in a much wider fund universe than the universe of recommended funds available to the newsletter's subscribers. In addition, the Fund portfolios are constantly monitored, every day, whereas the newsletter recommends portfolio changes just once per month. As a result of these two factors, a wider fund universe and more frequent monitoring, the Funds will frequently own funds that are different from those recommended in the newsletter.

The Funds' investments are not screened. While the Funds are based on a strategy and philosophy developed by the Sound Mind Investing newsletter, which is overtly Christian, there's nothing specific to the Funds to make them "Christian" funds per se.

The Sound Mind Investing Funds are designed to be owned instead of the newsletter's recommended funds, not in addition to them. Naturally you're free to use the funds as you see fit, but their purpose is to allow you to buy a single fund and have the managers carry out the full Upgrading process for you within one of the SMI Funds. So rather than have to buy and sell funds on your own using the monthly newsletter recommendations, you can buy one of the SMI Funds once and forget about it, knowing it will continue the Upgrading process on your behalf without requiring any further effort or attention from you.

The level of diversification you need for your portfolio is something you'll need to determine for yourself. One thing to keep in mind is the Funds normally don't have any bond investments. As most investing professionals will tell you, one of your most important decisions as an investor is the asset allocation decision, specifically, how to divide your money between stocks and bonds. Even if you choose to use the Sound Mind Investing Funds for your equity allocation, you'll need to find a different vehicle for your bond investments (if any). The asset allocation of the SMI Funds will be similar to the "100% Stock / 0% Bond" risk category allocations used by SMI newsletter subscribers.

That said, the SMI Funds are potentially a useful "one stop shop" for your stock investing. Normally you wouldn't want all your money in any single fund. But because these are "fund of funds", the situation here is quite different. While you're buying a single fund, the SMI Funds each own at least 20 other funds within them. So you're really not putting all your eggs in one basket — you're still going to indirectly own at least 20 separate funds, much as an investor would if they were to upgrade on their own using the SMI newsletter's recommendations. The difference is that you can accomplish it with just one purchase through one of the SMI Funds, rather than having to buy 20 or more separate funds on your own. And of course the main benefit is you don't have to keep up with upgrading twenty or more funds on your own after that, you can just buy and hold one of the SMI Funds' "fund of funds" and have the upgrading process accomplished for you automatically.

The SMI Managed Volatility Fund uses a dynamic hedge, which means the managers can alter at any time the amount of hedging taking place. The Fund may hedge up to 100% of the value of the equity securities in its portfolio, although management expects the hedge to typically be in the 25%-75% range. The managers regularly evaluate the hedging strategy based upon an analysis of a number of factors including, but not limited to, market trends, fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and the performance of the Fund's underlying funds.

You can do either. In many cases it will be slightly less expensive to invest directly with the Sound Mind Investing Funds. Most brokerages charge a transaction fee to buy the Funds, whereas it's free to invest with the Funds directly. That may not be a significant expense if making just a single purchase, but it definitely could be if you plan to add to your account regularly. See the Open An Account page for details.

Review the prospectus for more complete information, including fees and expenses. Please read it carefully before you invest or send money.

Feel free to email info@smifund.com or call toll-free 1-877-SMI-FUND (877-764-3863) if you have additional questions.