Kiplinger’s reports that expense ratios for stock mutual funds are rising, despite a horrific year of performance for most funds.

As described in the article, when assets in a fund fall below certain “breakpoints,” management fees as a percentage of assets increase.

So it could very well be the case that you, my dear mutual fund investor, not only saw your holdings decline in value by 50% last year, but you may have also paid taxes forced onto you by your fund…and now the fees you pay as a percentage of your assets could be going up, too.

You’d think that mutual fund companies might see an opportunity in that scenario to make it up to their investors by, for instance, lowering the breakpoint, or waiving the fee increase for their most loyal investors. At the very least you might think the fund companies would let their investors know that expense ratios will be increasing. Alas, neither will happen.

Mutual funds are broken.