Sector – Financial: Financial sector funds focus on the shares of banks, savings-and-loan institutions, insurance companies, brokerage companies, and consumer-credit providers. Most of these funds concentrate on one particular type of financial company, with banks often being the most popular area of concentration. 

Sector – Health: Health funds focus on the medical and health-care industries. Most invest in a range of companies, buying everything from pharmaceutical and medical-device makers to HMOs, hospitals, and nursing homes. A few funds concentrate on just one industry segment, such as service providers or biotechnology firms. As with any specialty fund, these concentrated funds are typically more risky than a diversified stock fund.     

Sector - Natural Resources: Natural Resources sector funds focus on commodity-based industries such as energy, chemicals, minerals, and forest products. Some funds invest across this spectrum to offer broad natural resources exposure. Others concentrate heavily or even exclusively in specific industries including energy or forest products. These concentrated funds are usually much riskier than the broad-based funds.      

Sector - Precious Metals: Precious metals funds focus on mining stocks, though some do own small amounts of gold bullion. Most funds concentrate on gold-mining stocks, but some have significant exposure to silver-, platinum-, and base-metal-mining stocks as well. Precious-metals companies are typically based in North America, Australia, or South Africa. As a result, these funds vary in their regional weightings. Whatever their geographic exposure, though, all of these funds are extremely risky.     

Sector - Real Estate: Real-estate funds invest primarily in real-estate investment trusts (REITs) of various types. REITs are companies that develop and manage real-estate properties. There are several different types of REITs, including apartment, factory-outlet, health-care, hotel, industrial, mortgage, office, and shopping center REITs. The performance of these funds is less connected to the overall market than most other types of stock funds.        

Sector – Technology: Technology funds buy high-tech businesses. Most concentrate on computer, semiconductor, software, networking, and other computer-related companies. A few also buy medical-device and biotechnology stocks and some concentrate on a single technology industry. Although many tech companies have long-term potential, they tend to be volatile over the short term due to constantly changes in technology development. As a result, these funds can be quite risky.    

Sector - Telecom: Telecom sector funds concentrate on telecommunication and media companies of various kinds. These include cable television, wireless-communication, and communication-equipment firms as well as traditional phone companies. A few favor entertainment firms, mainly broadcasters, film studios, publishers, and on-line service providers. Whether they are telecommunication or media oriented, these funds tend to invest in many overseas companies.     

Sector – Utilities:  Utilities funds invest in phone, power, gas, and water companies. These types of companies have historically been conservative investments that pay sturdy dividends. Not surprisingly, these funds tend to provide relatively little capital appreciation, and more in the way of yield. While they are generally conservative, these funds are still sensitive to interest rates and industry changes.

Large Cap Growth: These funds focus on large companies that are projected to grow faster than the overall stock market. Most funds here focus on companies in rapidly expanding industries, such as technology and health care, or multinational companies with a high percentage of sales coming from foreign markets.

Large Cap Value: Invest in large companies that are less expensive than the market as a whole. The companies may be out of favor with the market for some reason the manager thinks is unjustified, or simply be growing more slowly than other companies. They often come from the utilities, energy, financial, and cyclical sectors, and many pay dividends. They also generally have more-stable stock prices.

Large Cap Blend: Invest in large companies that are fairly representative of the overall stock market in both size and price. They tend to invest across the spectrum of U.S. industries and owing to their broad exposure; the funds' returns are often similar to the S&P 500 Index.

Mid Cap Growth: Invest in stocks of all sizes, thus averaging a mid-cap profile, but most focus directly on mid-size companies. Mid-cap growth funds target firms that are projected to grow faster than the overall market, therefore commanding relatively higher prices. Many of these stocks are found in the volatile technology, health-care, and services sectors.

Mid Cap Value: Some invest stocks of all sizes, giving them a mid-cap profile, and others focus directly on medium-size companies. All look for stocks that are cheap relative to their earnings potential. Many of their holdings come from the economically sensitive financial, energy, and manufacturing sectors. But these funds will dip into just about any industry that's been beaten down to cheap levels.

Mid Cap Blend: Invests in stocks of various sizes and mixed characteristics, giving it a middle-of-the road profile. Most shy away from high-priced growth stocks, but aren't so price-conscious that they land in value territory. Rather than concentrating in certain sectors, they invest fairly evenly across industries. Their flexibility makes them some of the most diverse funds available.

Small Cap Growth: Invest in stocks at the lower end of the market-capitalization range. These funds tend to favor companies in up-and-coming industries or young firms in their early growth stages. They find many of their holdings in the technology, health-care, services, and retail sectors. Because these businesses are fast growing and often richly valued, their stocks tend to be volatile.

Small Cap Value: These Funds invest in less-popular companies at the smaller end of the size range. Many look for stocks not yet discovered by Wall Street. Bolder funds focus on finding temporarily depressed stocks of companies working through business problems. Because many of the category's holdings come from the manufacturing, financial, and energy sectors, the funds tend to be economically sensitive.

Small Cap Blend:  These funds invest in companies at the smaller end of the market-capitalization range, and are flexible in the types of small caps they buy. They own everything from fairly cheap, out-of-favor stocks to somewhat expensive growth stocks. They thus provide exposure both to traditional value sectors, such as financials and cyclicals, and to growth sectors like technology and health care.

International - Foreign Stock: Foreign-stock funds can invest in any country outside the United States. Most of these funds divide their assets among a dozen or more developed markets, including Japan, Britain, France, and Germany. They tend to invest the rest in emerging markets such as Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico and Thailand. A few of these funds are more aggressive in their country selection, though, which can cause them to carry additional risk.

International - Emerging Markets:  These funds that invest in developing nations. Most funds divide their assets among 20 or more nations, although they tend to focus on the emerging markets of Asia and Latin America rather than on those of the Middle East, Africa, or Europe. Thus, popular holdings tend to be from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico, or Brazil. Whatever their favorite nations, all these funds have the potential for large price swings.

International - World Stock: These funds have few geographical limitations. It is common for these funds to invest about one third of their assets in the U.S., about one third in Europe, and about 10% in Japan, with the remainder divided among developed nations and emerging markets. Partly due to their broad geographic diversification, these funds have historically been among the least risky international offerings.

International - Asia/Pacific: These funds cover a wide geographic range. These funds can invest in any Asian nation except Japan, and they can also invest in New Zealand and Australia. Most of these funds focus on the nations of Southeast Asia, namely Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Because most of these nations are emerging markets, these funds tend to be more risky.

International - Europe: Funds investing in companies based in Europe. Most of these funds emphasize the region's larger and more developed markets, including Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland. Many also invest in smaller markets such as Sweden and Italy, and a few even invest in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe. Wherever they invest, currency fluctuations frequently affect investors' returns.

International - Japan: Funds emphasizing companies based in Japan. The Japanese stock market is one of the largest in the world, so these funds vary significantly in their holdings. Some funds concentrate on Japan's larger companies, while others concentrate on the nation's smaller firms. The Japanese yen has historically been volatile and that can greatly impact an investor's returns.

International - Latin America: These funds invest almost exclusively in stocks from Latin America. Most of these funds strongly favor the area's large markets, specifically Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. Smaller markets such as Peru or Colombia are generally less well represented in these funds. Large or small, though, all the region's nations are emerging markets, so these funds have the potential for big price swings.