Erika Safran, principal at the Financial Asset Management Corporation in Manhattan, called some of the riskier balanced funds "ridiculous for investors."

But riskier funds have turned in the best performances this year.

Money continues to pour into the riskiest mutual funds, which respond by investing the cash as fast as they can.

Q. Is investing in mutual funds - or the stock market in general - too risky for some people?

But these are incredibly risky funds.

She regularly sees couples in which one person would like to run with a risky mutual fund, but the other would prefer to pay off debt first.

And much of that money is going into the riskiest funds, the kind that buy small stocks and hope they will soar.

But it also reflects a surge of investment in riskier mutual funds, which have tended to put cash into some of the largest companies in the Nasdaq market.

His fund carries a high rating from Morningstar, which described its strategy as less risky than other technology mutual funds.

Any particularly risky funds that invest in a very narrow category of securities may be candidates for disposal as well.