American Funds Washington Mutual Investors

Objective And Strategy

Objective
Income exceeding the average yield on U.S. stocks generally and to provide an opportunity for growth of principal consistent with sound common stock investing.

Strategy
The fund invests primarily in dividend-paying common stocks of larger, more established companies domiciled in the U.S. with market capitalizations greater than $4.0 billion. The fund's investment adviser considers these types of investments to be "blue chip" stocks. The fund generally looks to the average yield on stocks of companies listed on the S&P. The fund also ordinarily invests at least 90% of its equity assets in the stock of companies whose debt securities are rated at least investment grade, and the fund may invest up to 10% of its assets in equity securities of larger companies domiciled outside the U.S., so long as they are listed or traded in the U.S. The fund invests, under normal market conditions, 90% of its assets in equity securities.

Principal Risks

* This portfolio invests in securities of foreign issuers which involves risks not typically associated with domestic issuers, including currency fluctuations and the possibility of political and economic instability. Emerging markets involve risks in addition to those generally associated with foreign securities, because political and economic structures in many emerging markets may be undergoing significant evolution and rapid development.

* The value of your investment in a Fund is based on the net asset value ("NAV") of the underlying funds and, in turn, the securities that the underlying funds hold. The Funds are subject to the risk that one or more underlying funds will not perform as expected or will underperform other similar funds or that the combination of underlying funds selected by the Funds' investment will not perform as expected. The Funds will be exposed to all of the risk of an investment in the underlying Funds.

* Growth stocks can perform differently from the market as a whole and other types of stocks and tend to be more expensive relative to their earnings or assets compared with other types of stocks. As a result, growth stocks tend to be more sensitive to changes in their earnings and can be more volatile than other types of stocks.

* The investment adviser to the fund actively managed the fund's investments. Consequently, the fund is subject to the risk that the methods and analyses employed by the investment adviser in this process may not produce the desired results. This could cause the fund to lose value or its investment results to lag relevant benchmarks or other funds with similar objectives.

* There may be little trading in the secondary market for particular bonds or other debt securities, which may make them more difficult to value, acquire or sell.