Standard & Poor's Equity Research has named the award winners of its inaugural US Mutual Fund Excellence Awards Program, including a few names that don't show up on other fund rating lists of top-ranked funds.
S&P created a mutual fund rating service that names what it considers the top three funds in each of a number of categories, such as global, domestic mid cap, taxable fixed income and blended individual securities, among others. Winners are awarded gold, silver and bronze recognition.
The new US Mutual Fund Excellence Awards Program includes risk-reward profiles, manager tenure and quality of the underlying holdings, in addition to performance, says Todd Rosenbluth, senior director, a mutual fund analyst at S&P Equity Research, and lead developer of the ranking system.
"Our methodology is different from the industry standard in that it combines past performance with our analysts' view of whether the fund is undervalued and their outlook for its positive future performance," says Dylan Cathers, S&P mutual fund analyst. "What resulted is an interesting mix of small and mid sized family of funds, along with large caps, with low cost ratios."
The awards program uses S&P proprietary programs to try to take the rankings of the 19,000 mutual funds beyond a simple, backwards look at past performance. The research is available through S&P's MarketScope Advisor platform, a source of multi-asset class research, rankings and allocation strategies. The rankings are done on a five-star system comparing funds of a like nature.
Some of the funds underrated by other industry rankings--but with five star ratings from S&P--include JPMorgan U.S. Equity Fund, Dreyfus Appreciation Fund and Jensen Portfolio. Each of these have a good three- or five-year track record but have underperformed in the past year, thus lowering the industry standard ratings, Cathers says.
Below is the list of award winners:
International Equity
Scout International Fund (UMBWX) -- Gold
Dodge & Cox International Stock Fund (DODFX) -- Silver
Oakmark International Fund; I (OAKIX) -- Bronze
Global Equity
Oakmark Global Fund; I (OAKGX) -- Gold
American Century Global Growth Fund; Investor
(TWGGX) -- Silver
Tweedy Browne Value Fund (TWEBX) -- Bronze
Domestic Large Cap Equity
Jensen Portfolio; J (JENSX) -- Gold
Becker Value Equity Fund (BVEFX) -- Silver
Dreyfus Appreciation Fund (DGAGX) -- Bronze