Dreyfus

Dreyfus is an investment management company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of New York Mellon. The firm has its origins in a brokerage company founded by Jack Dreyfus in 1947. In 1951, Dreyfus created his first mutual fund, the Dreyfus fund, along with the Dreyfus Corporation, the entity which managed the fund. Dreyfus led the company until stepping down in 1965. His successor, Howard Stern, was named CEO in 1971. The company offered its first no-load fund in 1974. In 1994 the Dreyfus Company was sold to Mellon Bank. Stern retired from the firm in 1996.

In 2000, the SEC sanctioned the company, and portfolio manager Michael L. Schonberg for improper use of warrants and stocks on initial public offerings in the Dreyfus Strategic Growth Fund and the Dreyfus Premier Growth Fund. The firm was sanctioned for not informing investors about these investments and accompanying risks.

Dreyfus offers retail investors both load and no-load mutual funds, closed end funds, annuities and insurance, retirement plans (personal and business), separately managed accounts, and brokerage services.

Boglehead-style investing at Dreyfus
The building blocks of Boglehead-style investing are low-expense-ratio index mutual funds and/or ETFs. Vanguard fans would suggest that Vanguard has the best and most complete lineup of such funds, and that the most convenient place to hold Vanguard mutual funds is directly at Vanguard. Thus, the Bogleheads forum and Wiki tends to be Vanguard-oriented. But investing according to the Boglehead philosophy certainly does not require you to invest at Vanguard or use Vanguard products. Here are some notes on how to do it at Dreyfus.

Index funds
Dreyfus offers a selection of index funds for retail investors. The Basic shares, available to investors in the Dreyfus S&P 500 Index Fund, and the Dreyfus Bond Market Index fund, provide lower expense ratios for investors who can meet the funds $10,000 minimum investment. The regular share class shares of the Dreyfus index funds have higher expense ratios than index funds offered by  Vanguard, Fidelity, and many exchange traded funds.

The firm offers three US stock index funds, based on S&P indexes, an international index fund based on the MSCI EAFE index, and a bond market index linked to the Barclays US Aggregate Bond Index.