“It is hard to find someone with a long track record that has continued to outperform,” said Steven Roge, a money manager at Bohemia, New York-based R.W. Roge.
Kenneth Heebner, whose CGM Focus Fund returned 32 percent a year from 2000 through 2007, stumbled in 2008 and never fully recovered. His fund trailed more than 99 percent of competitors over the past five years.
Bruce Berkowitz was named U.S. stock fund manager of the decade by Morningstar in 2010. A repeat looks all but impossible, with his Fairholme Fund also near the bottom during the past five years.
If pressed, those who follow the fund business can name a few more managers who have sustained their performance and visibility. The list includes David Herro and Bill Nygren of the Oakmark Funds and Fidelity’s Will Danoff.
Many of the industry’s best performers in recent years, including the Sequoia Fund, and funds from Dodge & Cox and Primecap, are run by groups of managers. The team approach is the antithesis of the star system and can help limit fallout if the makeup changes.
‘Investment Process’
“You want to sell an organization and an investment process, not one person,” said Robert Pozen, a former top executive at both Fidelity and MFS Investment Management in Boston.
When Howard Schow, one of the founders of Pasadena, California-based Primecap Management, died in 2012, the news caused little reaction from clients and the investment community, because the Primecap managers, like many of those running team-oriented funds, have long shunned publicity. When the team was picked by Morningstar as domestic stock manager of the year in January, Primecap refused to grant any interviews.
“There are still some fantastic managers out there,” said Kern of Advisor Partners. “They are just not people who are going to jump on the couch and throw their arms in the air.”