October 2006

Morningstar Introduces 'Personal Returns'

As of yesterday, individual investors can now obtain their own "personal returns" for stock and mutual fund investments on Morningstar.com. Morningstar created this new information within Portfolio Manager, a Morningstar.com tool for individuals to track and analyze their investment holdings. Personal returns give investors a true picture of their investment performance by taking into account all transactions and fees on an aggregated portfolio. For more details, see the press release, here.

Three "All-Weather" Mutual Funds

Richard Moroney, Dow Theory Forecasts, spotlights three no-load mutual funds that "have outperformed their peer group every year since 2000, the year the tech bubble burst and the S&P 500 Index peaked," in this article from Forbes.com: Fidelity Export & Multinational (FEXPX), T. Rowe Price New Horizons (PRNHX), and Vanguard Wellington (VWELX). Other "all-weather winners" mentioned include Third Avenue Value fund and Fidelity International Discovery fund.

Notable New Mutual Funds

John Waggoner, mutual fund writer at USAToday, spotlights some new mutual funds worth checking out, including Oakmark Global Select Fund, Leuthold Undervalued and Unloved Fund, Wasatch Strategic Income Fund, and the Wintergreen Fund, in this article from the Montgomery Advertiser.

Kiplinger's "Best List" of Mutual Funds

Kiplinger's spotlights its favorite funds in seven categories: Best U.S. Stock Fund, Dodge & Cox Stock; Best International Stock Fund, Dodge & Cox International; Best Exchange-Traded Fund, iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index; Best Socially Screened Fund, Winslow Green Growth; Best Low-Minimum Fund, Excelsior Value & Restructuring; Best Money-Market Fund, Transamerica Premier Cash Reserve; and Best Fund Revival, the Bruce Fund. For details, see the article.

Indices Continue to Outperform Active Fund Managers in 2006, Says S&P

Standard & Poor's released today the latest S&P Indices Versus Active Funds Scorecard (SPIVA) results. According to SPIVA, the S&P 500 outperformed 80.3% of actively managed large-cap funds during the third quarter of 2006, while the S&P SmallCap 600 outperformed 50.8% of small-cap funds. Actively managed mid-cap funds were the exception, with 69.4% of them beating the S&P MidCap 400 during the third quarter. For more details, see the firm's press release here.

Morningstar Introduces New "Investor Return" Data on Mutual Funds and ETFs

Morningstar announced yesterday that the firm is providing new data for open-end mutual funds and exchange-traded funds to capture how the average investor fared in a fund over a period of time. The new measure, called Morningstar Investor Return, estimates the return earned collectively by all the investors in a fund. Investor return, also known as dollar-weighted return, accounts for all cash inflows and outflows from purchases and sales and the growth in fund assets. It complements the more traditional metric of total return, which measures what investors could have earned had they bought and held the fund, reinvesting all dividends, over a period of time. See the Morningstar press release for more details.

Morningstar Screen Applying Bogle Formula

Dan Culloton, Morningstar.com, reports on an interesting strategy for selecting high potential managed mutual funds from Vanguard Funds founder, John C. Bogle, in this excerpt from a recent Vanguard Fund Family Report. Culloton turns Bogle's formula on his own firm's actively managed equity funds to see how the offerings stood up. Just four stock funds survived: Vanguard Asset Allocation (VAAPX), Vanguard Capital Opportunity (VHCOX), Vanguard Primecap (VPMCX), and Vanguard Health Care (VGHCX). Earlier when Culloton applied Bogle's screen to the full fund universe, he found mostly successful funds: Excelsior Value & Restructuring (UMBIX), Sound Shore (SSHFX), and T. Rowe Price Mid-Cap Growth (RPMGX), and one not-so-successful fund, White Oak Select Growth (WOGSX).