The deepening economic and financial crisis in 2011 highlighted a number of negative phenomena arising from the current state of development of world’s financial markets. The problems of the Euro area, the specter of its decay, and continuous rating downgrades of EU Member States undermined the confidence in the markets. This was also reflected on the example of the market of investment funds. A key element becomes a rapid identification of investment areas burdened with the largest and smallest exposure to price fluctuations in market factors.

This paper identifies and characterizes important legal, fiscal, socio-economic factors and effectiveness of investing into the investment funds in 1997-2015, which apart from strictly micro- and macroeconomic aspects are of considerable importance in this area.