First Schwab then E*Trade moved from the fund supermarket business into the proprietary fund business. Now TD Waterhouse is joining their ranks. The firm today unveiled seven new proprietary funds, raising the total number of its offerings to eight. TD Waterhouse is not new to the business (it was the first firm to offer a fund licensed on the Dow 30 in May 1998), but the move marks a major expansion of its offerings.

Both Schwab and E*Trade were careful to limit their offerings to index funds so as to limit the perceived competition with their supermarket fund clients. TD Waterhouse seems to be taking a similar path, although two of the new offerings are "enhanced" index funds rather than straight index funds. Those two new funds are advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. Interestingly, the Baltimore-based fund company itself has chosen to opt out of no transaction fee (NTF) supermarkets.

All of the new funds will be a part of the NTF network and carry a $1,000 minimum investment. The new proprietary funds are the TD Waterhouse Technology Fund, the TD Waterhouse Tax Managed Growth Fund, the TD Waterhouse Bond Index Fund, the TD Waterhouse 500 Index Fund, the TD Waterhouse Extended Market Index Fund, the TD Waterhouse Asian Index Fund and the TD Waterhouse European Index Fund.

Peter Mangan, who took the title of chief operating officer of Mutual Funds at TD Waterhouse Group in August and relocated from San Diego to New York, said that the decision to offer the new funds was based on "customer demand".  

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