Barrons Best Fund Families of 2020 – Barron’s

At this point, 2020 needs no introduction. In a single year, the Covid-19 pandemic claimed millions of lives around the world and wiped out trillions of dollars from the global economy. It changed the way most people work and live, and has left a lasting imprint on virtually every industryincluding the asset management firms that collectively oversee about $29 trillion in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

If ever there was a year for active managers to prove their mettle, it was last year. Granted, investors who rode it out in an index fund would have done just fine: The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (ticker: VOO) returned 18% in 2020. But it was a wild year for many active fundsespecially the more than two dozen stock funds that returned at least 100% in what is almost certainly a first in the history of the industry.

Record-setting returns helped propel many of the top-ranked fund families up the leaderboard in this years Barrons Fund Family Ranking, based on data from Refinitiv Lipper. But that wasnt the case for every company. In fact, the No. 1-ranked fund family, Manning & Napier, credits its strong performance to asset allocation. The runner-up, Guggenheim Investments, took its spot thanks to a bold call on the bond market.

The next two firms, No. 3-ranked Vanguard and Fidelity Investments at No. 4, are both massive fund complexes but quite different when it comes to their actively managed stock funds: Vanguard relies primarily on outside advisors, while Fidelity has one of the largest in-house research teams in the business.

Rounding out the top five, No. 5-ranked Morgan Stanley Investment Managementwhich debuted on our ranking in 2019 at No. 47made its mark in 2020 thanks largely to its Counterpoint Global team, which ushered five different funds to returns exceeding 100% for the year.

See previous years rankings:

As has been the case for the past two decades, Barrons Fund Family Ranking looks at the one-year relative performance of fund firms that offer a diversified lineup of actively managed mutual funds and ETFs. The ranking eliminates index funds, so results are based on firms skill in active management. The ranking itself is purely quantitative, yet behind the fund tickers and track records are individuals. They all have their own stories of relocating to home offices and contending with different strokes of personal disruptionduring the worst market selloff in history and one of the fastest recoveries on record.

To qualify for this ranking, firms must offer at least three active mutual funds or actively run ETFs in Lippers general U.S. stock category; one in world equity; and one mixed-asset, such as a balanced or allocation fund. They also need to offer at least two taxable bond funds and one national tax-exempt bond fund. All funds must have a track record of at least one year. While the ranking excludes index funds, it does include actively managed ETFs and smart beta ETFs, which are run passively but built on active investment strategies.

All told, just 53 asset managers out of the 822 in Lippers database met our criteria for 2020. The list varies from year to year, as firms merge, get acquired, or add or drop funds. After liquidating its mixed-asset funds, Aberdeen Standard Management dropped off this years ranking. Legg Mason is another notable firm thats no longer on the list; Franklin Templeton acquired the firm in 2020. Many other large fund managers are consistently absent because they dont check all of the boxes in the categories we consider. Notable names in this category include Janus Henderson, Dodge & Cox, and Charles Schwab Investment Management.

Active investing comes in many forms, but human decision-making is always part of the process, whether it entails picking individual stocks and bonds, creating and improving factor-based models, or making big-picture calls that affect multiple portfolios.

The first thing that went right for us was asset allocation, says Ebrahim Busheri, director of investments at Manning & Napier. The 50-year-old Rochester, N.Y., firm was an early adopter of asset-allocation funds and began offering life-cycle strategies in 1988, decades before the industry embraced them. Heading into the March selloff, the firms multi-asset portfoliosincluding four Pro-Blend fundsunderweighted equities, not because Busheri and his colleagues predicted the pandemic, but because they thought it was the late stages of the economic cycle and that valuations had gotten ahead of themselves.

When markets plummeted 34% in late February and March, the managers quickly changed course. We are truly an active manager, and when theres volatility, theres the potential to benefit. says Busheri.

The firms largest allocation fund, the $695 million Manning & Napier Pro-Blend Extended Term (MNBAX), went from a 46% allocation to stocks in February to 59% by the end of March. The fund returned 17.6% in 2020, better than 96% of its Lipper peers, and with less risk than the market. The funds maximum drawdown during the selloff last spring was 19%.

While allocation decisions set the tone, performance was also a function of security-specific decisions. We tend to grow our own talent, says Busheri, who joined the firm after getting his M.B.A. at the University of Rochester. Its easier to implement a specific strategy when you train analysts to think that way from day one.

On the equity side, the firm categorizes holdings into three main buckets: profile companies are growth stocks with sustainable competitive advantages; hurdle rate companies are out-of-favor cyclical companies; and bankable deals are companies whose parts are greater than their market value. During the selloff last spring, Manning & Napier managers focused primarily on buying or adding to their positions in profile companies such as Amazon.com (AMZN), PayPal Holdings (PYPL), and ServiceNow (NOW).

See Barrons Best Fund Families of 2020 rankings below. Scroll down to read the rest of the article.

*Total assets reflect the funds included in the survey. **Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately. (To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.)

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

Though stocks dominated the headlines, some of the biggest dislocations last March were in the bond market. Heading into 2020, Anne Walsh, chief investment officer of fixed income at No. 2-ranked Guggenheim Investments, and her colleagues battened down the hatches, thinking that most bonds were priced to perfection. Then came the coronavirus, and things pivoted almost overnight, she says, recounting how redemptions in riskier corporate bonds exacerbated losses for managers who were forced to sell. Meanwhile, companies issued new bondswith significantly higher yields than a couple of months priorto raise capital to weather the crisis. This opened the door for Guggenheim to go shopping.

After lagging behind its benchmark in 2019, the $25 billion Guggenheim Total Return Bond fund (GIBIX) returned more than 15% in 2020, and beat nearly all of its Lipper peers. Likewise, the $6 billion Guggenheim Macro Opportunities fund (GIOIX) returned 11.6% to rank at the top of its peer group.

Guggenheim offers a diverse lineup of funds, but most of its $246 billion in assets under management are in fixed income. Guggenheim is adept at turning market dislocations in its favor. It cleaned up after the 2008-09 financial crisis, and in 2014, following the taper tantrum, the Total Return Bond fund returned 8.3%outpacing most of its peers.

Still, last year was its own story, namely because things snapped back so quickly, says Walsh. The company tries to minimize behavioral biases that often lead to second-guessing through its organizational structure. Guggenheims 214 fixed-income investment professionals, who are based primarily in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York, work in four groups, each focused on macroeconomics, portfolio construction, security analysis, and portfolio management.

The market has bounced back, but Walsh and her colleagues say there is still room for yields on riskier bonds to move closer to their risk-free equivalents. Nothing moves in a straight line, but generally speaking, the trend is toward tighter spreads, she says.

This years No. 3 spot goes to Vanguard. The $7.1 trillion manager is best known as a powerhouse in index investing, but its $1.7 trillion in actively managed fundssplit evenly between equity and fixed incomemakes it one of the largest active investors in the world. Vanguard doesnt do much stock-picking in-house; most of the firms active equity funds are managed by outside advisors, as has been the case since John Bogle founded Vanguard to handle the administrative functions of his previous employer, Wellington Management.

Working with subadvisors allows Vanguard to seek out the best talent in any given area and keep costs low, says Kaitlyn Caughlin, who is a principal and head of Vanguards Portfolio Review Department, charged with developing and maintaining funds managed in-house and by roughly two dozen outside firms.

In the case of the $71 billion Vanguard International Growth fund (VWILX), subadvisors Schroder Investment Management and Baillie Gifford delivered a nearly 60% return in 2020, thanks to long-term positions in top performers like Alibaba Group Holding (BABA), Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), and Tesla (TSLA).

Wellington Managements Don Kilbride has run the $45 billion Vanguard Dividend Growth fund (VDIGX) since 2006 with a philosophy that rising dividends are both a byproduct and harbinger of high-quality companies that can compound returns, even in tough environments. Top holdings such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Nike (NKE), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) contributed to the funds 12% return last year, better than 85% of its Lipper peers.

The $48 billion Vanguard Windsor II fund (VWNAX) also helped Vanguards overall standing. It returned 14.5% in 2020 to edge out most of its large-value peersthough some of its larger holdings, such Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL), arent prototypical value stocks. Its considered a value manager, but certainly not in the way we think of value, says Daniel Wiener, chairman of Adviser Investments and senior editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors.

Last year, 83% of the firms active fixed-income fundsmost of which are managed in-houseoutperformed their respective benchmarks. That includes the $74 billion Vanguard Short-Term Investment-Grade (VFSUX) and $37 billion Vanguard Intermediate-Term Investment-Grade (VFIDX) funds, which were up more than 5% and 10%, respectively, in 2020, putting them in the top decile of their Lipper peers. Smart investment decisions drive performance, but low feesas in an average asset-weighted expense ratio for Vanguard actively managed bond funds of 0.11%are part of the equation. In a low-yield fixed-income environment, ultralow expenses win the day, Wiener says.

Whereas Vanguard outsources most of its fundamental equity research, No. 4-ranked Fidelity has one of the largest in-house research departments in the businesshundreds of equity and credit analysts collectively calling the shots on most of its $2.5 trillion in actively managed assets. In a typical year, Fidelitys research team has more than 13,000 face-to-face meetings with companiesa process that went virtual in a matter of days last spring.

Tim Cohen, co-head of equity, says that he and his colleagues look forward to the time when they can kick the tires in real life. For now, there are positives. As active managers, we benefit from change, Cohen says, noting that collectively, Fidelitys equity funds outperformed their benchmarks by 8.9 percentage points.

Meanwhile, the virtual world makes it possible to defy physics. For all its downside, there was at least one upside in 2020: I was able to be in a few places at one time, says Sonu Kalra, manager of the $40 billion Fidelity Blue Chip Growth (FBGRX). For example, I could attend health care, tech, and consumer conferencesvirtuallyall on the same day. Thats not possible if you have to travel to California, New York, and Florida.

Because Barrons rankings are asset-weighted, a firm tends to rank high when its larger funds post strong relative performance. That was the case for Kalras fund, which returned 62% in 2020, better than 98% of its peers. The same was true of the $45 billion Fidelity Growth Company (FDGRX) which returned 68%. Though it returned more than 32% last year, Fidelitys $132 billion Contrafund (FCNTX) landed in the bottom third of its peer group, detracting from the firms overall score. Contrafunds 2020 problem, in short, according to manager Will Danoffs letter to shareholders: too much Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) and not enough Apple.

On the fixed-income side, many of Fidelitys bigger contributors are part of Fidelitys Strategic Advisers series. The funds arent available directly to retail investors or through financial advisors, but they are included in the ranking because they are the basis of a growing segment of separately managed accounts, which are available primarily through individual and workplace retirement plans.

Finally, No. 5-ranked Morgan Stanley Investment Management made its first appearance in the ranking in 2019 and climbed the ranksin a big wayin 2020. The asset management arm of Morgan Stanley has no central investment research office or chief investment officer calling the shots. Rather, more than 20 autonomous teams specializing in a wide range of public and private markets manage $781 billion in assets.

In 2020, Morgan Stanley announced that it would acquire Eaton Vance (No. 48) in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. Given that there is little overlap in focus areas Eaton Vance brings deep expertise in municipal bonds and owns Calvert Research & Management, a leader in sustainable investingit isnt expected to dramatically change how Morgan Stanley teams manage money.

We have a lot of diverse views, and typically, smaller decision-making groups tend to succeed, says Dennis Lynch, head of the Counterpoint Global team, which manages about $150 billion in 19 growth-oriented strategies. And talk about succeeding: Five of the mutual funds managed by Lynchs team returned more than 100% in 2020. Relative underperformance in 2019 (Morgan Stanley ranked 47th last year) helped to slingshot results in 2020. Many of our companies were underappreciated coming into 2020, Lynch says. And many benefited from quicker [Covid spurred] adoption of secular trends already in their favor.

The $20 billion Morgan Stanley Institutional Growth (MSEQX) returned 115%. Like many top performers in 2020, it was an early investor in companies that benefited from the sudden shift to all things digital. Zoom Video Communications (ZM) and Shopify (SHOP) were two outsize contributors last year. Similar themes played out in the teams other funds, including Morgan Stanley Insight (CPOAX) and Morgan Stanley Discovery (MPEGX), which were up 116% and 142%, respectively, as well as small-cap growth fund Morgan Stanley Inception (MFLLX) and world stock fund Morgan Stanley Global Endurance (MSJSX).

Lynch says that Counterpoint Global doesnt invest in themes, but the team does spend a lot of time thinking about the impacts of secular trends. Five members of the team are in charge of researching disruptive changeareas that range from, say, artificial intelligence to gene editing. The team has long had a book club, and now that Zoom is ubiquitous, it has started inviting authors to join the online discussions. Recent guests include David Epstein, author of Range, and Abigail Marsh, author of The Fear Factor.

Carving out time to think about big ideas is important for long-term returns, says Lynch, but so is making sure that everyone is on the same page.

*Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

*Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

All mutual and exchange-traded funds are required to report their returns (to regulators as well as in advertising and marketing material) after fees are deducted, to better reflect what investors would actually experience. But our aim is to measure manager skill, independent of expenses beyond annual management fees. Thats why we calculate returns before any 12b-1 fees are deducted. Similarly, fund loads, or sales charges, arent included in our calculation of returns.

Each funds performance is measured against all of the other funds in its Refinitiv Lipper category, with a percentile ranking of 100 being the highest and one the lowest. This result is then weighted by asset size, relative to the fund familys other assets in its general classification. If a familys biggest funds do well, that boosts its overall ranking; poor performance in its biggest funds hurts a firms ranking.

To be included in the ranking, a firm must have at least three funds in the general equity category, one world equity, one mixed equity (such as a balanced or target-date fund), two taxable bond funds, and one national tax-exempt bond fund.

Single-sector and country equity funds are factored into the rankings as general equity. We exclude all passive index funds, including pure index, enhanced index, and index-based, but include actively managed ETFs and so-called smart-beta ETFs, which are passively managed but created from active strategies.

Finally, the score is multiplied by the weighting of its general classification, as determined by the entire Lipper universe of funds. The category weightings for the one-year results in 2020 were general equity, 35.6%; mixed asset, 20.7%; world equity, 17.3%; taxable bond, 21.9%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The category weightings for the five-year results were general equity, 36.2%; mixed asset, 20.9%; world equity, 16.9%; taxable bond, 21.6%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.4%. For the 10-year list, they were general equity, 37.5%; mixed asset, 19.5%; world equity, 17.3; taxable bond, 20.8%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The scoring: Say a fund in the general U.S. equity category has $500 million in assets, accounting for half of the firms assets in that category, and its performance lands it in the 75th percentile for the category. The first calculation would be 75 times 0.5, which comes to 37.5. That score is then multiplied by 35.6%, general equitys overall weighting in Lippers universe. So it would be 37.5 times 0.356, which equals 13.35. Similar calculations are done for each fund in our study. Then the numbers are added for each category and overall. The shop with the highest total score wins. The same process is repeated to determine the five- and 10-year rankings.

Email: editors@barrons.com

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Barrons Best Fund Families of 2020 - Barron's