This data point identifies the percentage of the fund's net assets held in cash. Cash encompasses both actual cash and cash equivalents (fixed-income securities with a maturity of one year or less) held by the portfolio plus receivables minus payables. Negative percentages of cash indicate that the portfolio is leveraged, meaning it has borrowed against its own assets to buy more securities or that it has used other techniques to gain more than 100% exposure to the market.

Cash flow before any investment or financing activities. If a company cannot generate adequate operating cash flow, it may need to rely on outside funding to meet its financial obligations.

Cash flow from operations is the cash version of net income. Net income figures include non cash costs such as depreciation and excludes other cash expenditures, such as purchases of plants or equipment. Cash flow adjusts the income figures to a cash basis. Cash flow from operations is cash flow after adjusting for operating differences such as depreciation, but before adjusting for investments (such as purchases of plants or equipment) or financing. This information is taken directly from the cash-flow statement of the company's most-recent annual report.

Example: A media company posts net income of only $73 million. Its cash flow from operations, on the other hand, is $1.4 billion. (The reason: Big depreciation and amortization charges weigh down net income, but since they really aren't cash outlays, these changes have no effect on cash flow.) The company is a much healthier company than its net income would lead you to believe.

Many investors focus on cash flow from operations instead of net income because there's less room for management to manipulate, or accounting rules to distort, cash flow. If net income is much larger than cash flow from operations, it's a signal that the company's earnings quality-the usefulness of earnings-is questionable. If cash flow from operations exceeds net income, on the other hand, the company may be much healthier than its net income suggests. That's why many investors, when they try to value a stock, will use the price/cash-flow ratio the share price divided by cash flow from operations per share-instead of the P/E ratio.

Like open-end funds, closed-end funds gather money from large and small investors alike. The combined assets are managed by portfolio managers from investment firms, some of which are the same fund companies familiar to mutual-fund investors. The value of one share of this pool of money is called the closed-end fund's net asset value, or NAV, just like with open-end funds.

Until the late 1990s, closed-end funds only determined their NAVs once a week, unlike mutual funds, which figure the value every day. Now, though, a large number of closed-end funds provide their NAVs daily.

One big difference between the two formats is that open-end funds sell new shares and redeem existing shares for investors every day, causing net assets to fluctuate-often wildly-even if the NAV isn't changing much. But, with some exceptions, closed-end funds sell shares to investors only once, in an initial public offering (IPO). When shareholders want to sell their closed-end fund shares, they must sell to other investors through brokers, as with a common stock. Most closed-end funds are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The broker-whether discount, full-service, or online-gets the same commission it would if it were trading a stock. This commission is the only charge for buying the fund on the market, but it can't be avoided. For that reason, there are no "no-load" closed-end funds-or "load" funds, for that matter, except arguably at their IPO, as explained below.

Because they trade on exchanges, closed-end funds have a second price besides their NAV. The price at which investors actually buy and sell shares is called the market price. Investors can learn the market price of a closed-end fund at any minute of the day, as with a stock price. To get a fund's current share price on Morningstar.com, just type the ticker or name of the fund in the box at the top left of the home page, and then click on "Quote" from the menu that appears.

It's almost never a good idea to buy a closed-end fund at its IPO. A built-in underwriting charge is included in the initial price-something akin to a load, in fact. And unlike some IPOs, a closed-end fund is extremely unlikely to rise sharply soon after its IPO. So there's no hurry. By waiting and buying shares on the market, investors can avoid paying that underwriting charge, which can be as large as 7%.

The two prices of a closed-end fund means that it usually is bought and sold at a price higher or lower than its NAV. (The two prices could be identical, but they rarely are.) Most closed-end funds sell at discounts to their NAV. For years, academics and other researchers have come up with a variety of theories why that's so, but none of the theories has proven itself consistently enough to be considered a definitive explanation.

Composition breakdown allows investors to glean information about the portfolio's investment strategy. A portfolio with a large percentage of its assets in cash, for example, might indicate a defensive position, while a heavy bond exposure in a balanced fund may reveal a solid income orientation. In knowing a fund's composition, an investor can be sure that he or she is getting the type of fund they're looking for. If you are looking for an aggressive growth fund, for example, the fund's composition shouldn't reveal a 25% bond position.

Cash encompasses both the actual cash and the cash equivalents (fixed-income securities with maturities of one year or less) held by the portfolio. Investors should note that negative percentages of cash indicate that the portfolio is leveraged, meaning it has borrowed against its own assets to buy more securities or that it has used other techniques to gain additional exposure to the market. The percentage listed as stocks incorporates only the portfolio's straight common stocks. Bonds include every fixed-income security with a maturity of more than one year, from government notes to high-yield corporate bonds. Other includes preferred stocks (equity securities that pay dividends at a specified rate), as well as convertible bonds and convertible preferreds, which are corporate securities that are exchangeable for a set amount of another form of security (usually shares of common stock) at a prestated price. Other also includes all those not-so-neatly categorized securities, such as warrants and options.