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...been a great year for many mutual fund investors. Standard & Poor's Equity Research reports that 165 equity mutual funds are up at least 47% through Oct. 31, or at least double the return...
...domestic equity funds that at least doubled the market's return, only 12% are ranked as S&P five-star funds. In fact, 19% are now ranked with a one- or two-star rating, effectively placing them in the bottom half of funds on overall attractiveness. "These funds have relatively weak fundamentals that contribute negatively to the ranking," S&P's analysts note in their report. The reasons cited for such low star rankings: many own overvalued or risky stocks, have managers with short tenures, have high costs or offer poor long-term performance...
...this year, according to Morningstar. However, S&P believes the fund's "volatile longer-term performance should give investors cause for concern." It noted that the fund significantly lagged its peer average in 2007 and 2008, pushing it into the bottom quartile on a three- and five-year total return basis. Also, S&P analysts contend the fund's securities are currently overvalued and pose risk based on their growth and consistency when it comes to historical earnings and dividends. It also cited the fund's cost factors as contributing to the fund's weaker ranking...
However, Stan Majcher, principal and portfolio manager of the Hotchkis & Wiley Mid-Cap Value Fund, disagrees. Majcher noted that his fund has a strong long-term performance record, as Morningstar currently ranks it the third best performing mid-cap fund when it comes to annualized returns over the past 10 years, with an annualized return of 10.85%. He acknowledges the fund underperformed in 2007 and 2008, but doesn't think these periods should be considered in isolation. (Read about the financial crisis after one year...
What's going on? Part of it is the fact that "gold's gyrations are the Dow Jones index of anxiety," as this magazine put it three decades ago amid the last big gold fever. When investors are scared - about inflation, about political turmoil, about financial breakdown - they return to the soft, shiny metal that has for millennia served as a store of value. When things calm down, as they did after the gold price peaked in 1980 at $850, demand for gold subsides and the price declines. (See pictures of modern day gold prospectors...