I’d like to invest in Janus’ new Strategic Value Fund through my Charles Schwab account, but can’t find the ticker symbol anywhere. What am I doing wrong?

You’re not doing anything wrong, but you’ve discovered the secret of new-fund ticker symbols: A fund must have 1,000 investors or $25 million in assets before it can apply to Nasdaq for a ticker symbol.

Even a giant newcomer like Janus Strategic Value, which amassed $1.6 billion in assets during a popular pre-offering subscription period, couldn’t apply for a ticker symbol until after the fund had opened on February 29.

Then, it takes a while for the application to be processed. Strategic Value wasn’t assigned a symbol until March 14. The fund’s new symbol, JSVAX, still hasn’t made it to many quote-service Web sites and isn’t on all of Schwab’s lists, either -- although it’s one of Schwab’s no-fee funds.

But the transaction will be processed correctly if you type the symbol into the online trading screen. Until Strategic Value received its permanent symbol, it traded at Schwab with the temporary ticker of JSV1Z. Each brokerage has its own procedure, so call or search first to learn about its rules for investing in pre-ticker funds.

Some tiny funds live for a long time without a ticker. As a result, you won’t be able to look them up in your local newspaper’s mutual fund listings or on most Web sites, but you can usually track down more information at the fund company’s Web site or at MAXFunds.com, which specializes in small and new mutual funds.

Also, you’ll usually find some mention of the fund by searching through Morningstar’s newswires, even though the fund stats won’t make it to the Web site until the fund has a ticker.

MORE: Kiplinger.com | Investing | Column

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