Meet the champs of the 2007 Standard & Poor's/BusinessWeek Excellence in Fund Management AwardsThere are more than 6,000 mutual funds, but, hey, how many can you name? Chances are the ones you know are offered by giants such as Fidelity, T. Rowe Price (TROW), and Vanguard.
The biggies have some fine funds, but excellence is not a matter of size. Scores of outstanding funds run by small investment management outfits fly below the radar. Ever heard of Keeley Small Cap Value (KSCUX
)? What about Kinetics Paradigm? They're both among our 24 winners of this year's Standard & Poor's/BusinessWeek Excellence in Fund Management Awards. "Year after year we unearth these tiny gems," says Phil Edwards, S&P's managing director of funds research. (Standard & Poor's, like BusinessWeek, is a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP).)
To find our winners, we start with the 830 funds rated A or B+ in their categories for the five years ending on Dec. 31, 2006, in the BusinessWeek Mutual Fund Scoreboard (BW—Jan. 22). Our highest ratings don't necessarily go to the funds that racked up the biggest numbers. What counts are the risk-adjusted returns.
To be considered for the award, a fund must have assets of at least $100 million, a manager with at least five years' tenure, and a minimum investment of less than $26,000. It should also be open to new investors. Once a fund clears those hurdles, S&P analysts conduct in-depth, face-to-face interviews with managers to quiz them on investment practices.
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