The earliest British funds and the earliest American funds were closed-end funds. The earliest open-end fund is the Massachusetts Gold Investment Trust Fund, which was established by Massachusetts Financial Services Company in Boston, USA on March 1924 (the assets of the fund were only $50,000 when it was established, and it was expanded to $394,000 at the end of the first year, and its assets have now exceeded $654.38 billion).

1 940165438+1October1,after the American investment company law came into effect, the US Securities and Exchange Commission divided the investment companies managed into "open" and "closed", and gradually began to "open" the same investment company, which was later. Taking this opportunity, after 1940, the open-end fund has gradually become the mainstream variety of the fund industry, with the characteristics of large scale and high transparency of operation, which can greatly reduce the liquidity risk of investors and increase investment flexibility. According to statistics, in 1940, the assets of American open-end funds were US$ 4.47 billion, closed-end funds were US$ 6,654.38+300 million, and the ratio of open-end funds to closed-end funds was 0.73:1; By 1993, the assets of open-end funds in the United States are $65,438 +0.8 trillion, while the assets of closed-end funds are only $90 billion, and the ratio of open-end fund assets to closed-end fund assets reaches 20:1; By 1996, the assets of open-end funds in the United States were $3.5392 trillion, while the assets of closed-end funds were only128.5 billion, and the ratio of open-end funds to closed-end funds reached 27.54: 1. By the end of 1999, there were 779 open-end funds1with assets of 6.85 trillion dollars and 534 closed-end funds with assets of only158 billion dollars.