LPEFX has been one of Old_Skeet's holdings for now better than five years with an average annual return, for me, of around 15%. I hold this fund in the specialty sleeve found in the growth area of my portfolio.

Some background ...
MFO's Fund Family Scorecard measures how well funds run by the same management company have performed against their peers since inception.
We first published the card in June 2014 commentary with How Good Is Your Fund Family?, followed by updates in May 2015 and May 2016. Beginning in June 2016, our premium site updates the card monthly and provides fund family metrics.
Scorecard ranking is based on absolute total return, reflecting reinvested dividends and expenses, but excluding any load, since first full month of fund inception (or back to Jan 1960, which starts our Lipper database).
A "fund family" comprises at least 3 funds, excluding money market, age 3 months or more, oldest share class only. The methodology is strictly quantitative, based on past performance of existing funds. It does not account for survivorship bias, category drift, management or strategy changes.
OK, with that out of way, this month seven new fund families entered the scorecard. They are: Alambic, Amplify, Leader, MML, Polen, Vest and W E Donoghue.
Alambic and Polen both entered the scorecard with a "Top Fund Family" rating. All of their funds have beaten their peers since inception (click on image to enlarge):


Alambic Investment Management LP was founded in 2013 and is based in San Francisco, CA.
Polen Capital Management LLC was founded in 1989 and is based in Boca Raton, FL.

Thanks @Ted...or should I say "Quick Draw McGraw". I will circular file my post.

I looked at some random samples:
PRSNX GLOBAL bond, past 3 months: 2.05%
MAINX (Asia, but lumped into Global Bond categ. at M*: ) 1.83%.
..."The riskiest bonds outperformed sharply..." (Morningstar.)
TPINX 4.89%
PHMIX (HY Munis:) 3.31%
PREMX 3.29%
FNMIX: 3.62%
...And then there's the more conservative and investment-grade stuff:
LSIIX : 1.96%
DLFNX 1.19%
DODIX 1.11%
....So, yeah. This jives. I don't do ETFs, though, so...

It is only because Berko has so much of his own money invested I didn't bail on FAIRX. He can keep his funds alive all by himself. And for all his faults, not literally investing his net worth is his funds is not one of them.
It is the Stewart Mid Caps and the Whiteboxes and the like one has to worry about.
All things aside, this tidbit from that article takes the cake...
A Vanguard Group study of funds that were either liquidated or merged from 1997 through 2011 found that, in the 18 months before their demise, dying stock funds performed significantly worse than the typical fund in their investment category.
Who thought a fund hitting the cover off the ball would die ?!?!?! And a fund that did that and decided to close and return money to its shareholders hardly "died".
I'm telling you I did the right thing keeping (at least one so far) of my daughter's away from STEM. One needs to take some special classes to develop the kind of wisdom needed to helm such classic situations and then to pen about them.

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, is being sued by a former employee for self-dealing in the company's 401(k) plan, the latest excessive-fee case involving an asset manager offering proprietary investment funds to retirement plan participants.
In the lawsuit, Baird v. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. et al, the plaintiff claims almost all the fund options in the company's roughly $1.6 billion 401(k) plan are affiliated with BlackRock, even though the funds have high fees and poor performance.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/#q=BlackRock+sued+for+alleged+self-dealing+in+its+401(k)+plan

FYI: As many investors pull money from actively managed stock mutual funds, shareholders who stay put may face special risks.
For one, funds must have cash ready to pay investors who are bailing out. That may force a fund manager to sell securities in the portfolio — including stocks that the manager believes have great long-term potential.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-investing-quarterly-dead-funds-20170409-story.html

FYI: Global bond funds outperformed U.S. domestic fixed-income funds as the Federal Reserve decided to go ahead with an interest-rate hike in March, surprising most market participants who expected it in June.
The average general U.S. taxable bond fund fell 0.05% in March, trimming its Q1 gain to 1.58%.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/mutual-funds/these-areas-hold-promise-in-bonds-after-topsy-turvy-q1/

" High levels of portfolio turnover may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes for you if your Fund shares are held in a taxable account."
Straight from the prospectus. It's got several more sentences about how turnover affects costs and how short term gains affect taxes. Can't say the fund isn't upfront about things. It even lists high turnover as an investment risk.
Hard to tell whether this high turnover is an anomaly or to be expected. The AUM have fluctuated wildly, though the correlation with turnover here isn't obvious:

2012    2013     2014    2015    2016
AUM        $49K    $8.6M    $10M   $0.85M   $4.3M
turnover    76%     64%      89%    108%     194%

Near the end of 2015, AllianzGI Behavioral Advantage Large Cap Fund was reorganized into this fund. So the earlier figures are substantially meaningless. Same management but different "principal investment strategies, as well as fees and expenses." (Again, quoting prospectus.) Without knowing more, I'm inclined to attribute the plummet in AUM to the reorganization of the fund.

FYI: Male stock analysts tend to write more favorably about public companies headed by men than about companies led by women.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stock-analysts-biases-are-showing-a-study-finds-1491489368

FYI: There isn’t a lot of common ground between the detractors and proponents of investing some of the Social Security trust fund’s assets in stocks.
On the one side are those who can’t believe anyone would even consider such an idea; on the other side are those who say the detractors are overreacting. After all, no one is proposing that 100% of the Social Security kitty be plowed into stocks, or used for day trading, they say.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.wsj.com/articles/should-the-social-security-trust-fund-be-allowed-to-invest-in-stocks-1491790740

FYI: It was a busy start to spring as we assigned dozens of new ratings, upgraded seven, and downgraded four funds.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=801436

FYI: Today’s infants may gasp in wonder 20 years from now at tales of how humans once were trusted to drive cars. They may also be shocked that humans once were trusted to pick stocks for investment portfolios.
The soaring popularity of “index” or “passive” mutual funds in the last few years has dealt another blow to the ranks of traditional “actively managed” funds — the ones with human portfolio managers who are supposed to ferret out the best stocks and beat the market average return.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-investing-quarterly-active-funds-20170409-story.html

Morn'in @VintageFreak
From a post or two I linked over the years, from Nov. 2009, per Mr. Lloyd Blankfein.
http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfein-says-he-is-doing-gods-work-2009-11

A quick look at FTHNX, and I've never seen it before, suggests that the 194% turnover ratio and the out-sized distributions for 2014-2016 mean that this is no fund for a taxable account or for an investor looking for tax efficiency.
George Putnam bombards me with ads for hisTurnaround Letter. He claims to be able to pick the winners out of the detritus of stocks that are, in the language of the day, "unfairly punished," as if there were a moral component to investing. If this business were "fair," the good guys would get wealthy and the bad guys would own all the value traps. Ain't gonna happen in my lifetime.

I've known about FTHNX for a while. I think it is public knowledge I make it my business to know about "single fund companies". The only reason I haven't taken a second look is because of assets under management. One bad year kills such funds. Unless manager is managing money similarly elsewhere and not totally reliant on ER from the fund to exist.
However, now that it has gotten publicity I will keep it on my radar :-)
Manager ownership reasonable (I think). Trustee ownership ludicrous - Two people may collective have more than $2 in the fund (Stupid $1 - $10000).
Seems like bonds are used in lieu of "cash". Turnover of 194% - need to understand this in the context of how the cash position has changed over time. Especially important given the fund has not witnessed a bear market. Lot's of funds look very good after bear markets, until the next. Please don't fooled by M* "low" risk rating.
Finally, look at UBVAX chart in the last bear market.

http://www.businessinsider.com/feds-pension-fund-is-flashing-a-warning-sign-about-the-trump-trade-2017-3
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4060987-feds-recent-stock-market-warning-ominous-ever
Follow the Fed?

Nice article. I was somewhat familiar with the Undiscovered Managers fund UBVAX, but had never heard of FTHNX. Thanks for the pointer.
I find that it's not hard on occasion to spot a stock that has been unfairly beaten down on some news. But should I buy, I wouldn't have a clue when to get out, so I leave trading to fund managers. The FTHNX prospectus says it buys securities when investors overreact to bad news or underreact to good news, and it sells when the opposite occurs, which I guess is either investors overreacting to good news or underreacting to bad news.
Identifying overreaction to bad news IMHO isn't that hard if one is familiar with the industry involved and has a good sense of long term prospects. An industry may be sound, but someone says the sky is falling. (Think of the muni bond market after Meridith Whitney's 2010 prediction of 50-100 defaults.)
But how do you know that good news is good, but not quite as good as people think? That's more subtle. Or that bad news is actually worse than people think. Kudos to managers who can do this well. Not to mention doing it frequently. The individual investor need only react when he spots something, as opposed to having a day job of actively seeking these over/under reactions.
I agree with the quote in the article: "But over long periods of time, it’s difficult to say markets under- or overreact." That would seem to call for higher turnover. Individual security behavioral anomalies don't persist (though as I said, I've no clue when they're ended, i.e. when to exit). Which makes me wonder how some of these funds can operate with such low turnover, e.g. LSVEX (15% turnover).
Regarding the nuts and bolts of FTHNX - the prospectus ER of the fund is 1.07%, the 0.89% is what's reported in the latest annual report. The difference appears due to an a service fee of 0.20% that the fund is allowed to charge (prospectus) in order to pay brokerages for servicing the shareholders. That fee is not currently being charged.
Regardless, these number incorporate a fee waiver of about 2%, which is scheduled to be reduced by 0.20% next February. That is, you should count on the ER rising by 0.2% in 10 months. Still not too expensive for a small cap fund.
Also, while the fund is NTF at Schwab (and elsewhere), it is TF at Fidelity.

Hi LewsBraham,
You are making a distinction without much of a meaningful difference.
Above a rather modest threshold IQ score, higher IQs only contribute minor advantages to market investors. Those advantages center more on diversification and willingness to invest factors than ito specific stock selections. Stock selection is hazardous duty independent of IQ. The essential difference is Emotional Intelligence, and not IQ.
As Warren Bufferr observed: " You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ." In some other quote, he noted that an IQ well below 100 was sufficient for successful investing.
Regardless of who is making the investment decision, be it a professional group like a mutual fund management team or an individual investor, the key to achieving superior returns is mostly dependent on Emotional Intelligence, not raw IQ. Emotional Intelligence and control are what your article mostly describes, and that is exactly what my additional references also highlight.
Emotional Intelligence considerations, as applied to the firms you discussed, are what permitted these outfits to separate themselves from the less successful pack of hungry wolves (mutual funds).. That's why I provided informative references that focus on that emerging discipline.
I hope MFO regulars benefit from these Links. I'm sure you are intimately familiar with that subject; some MFOers might not be.
By the way, I still can not access your article a second time without sacrificing some personal data that I'm not prepared to give away.
Best Wishes

Hi VintageFreak,
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/111328100
https://fidelity.com/fund-screener/compare.shtml#!&fIds=BVAOX%2CDISSX&tab=pf
Going to have some moving parts, so I hope this works. On Fidelity, BVAOX is listed small blend. Granted, not an index (see strategy on the page and similar funds).
I'm going more toward indexes .... they're cheaper and hard to beat. VWELX - agreed would not own VWINX. But I would add more to VWELX and skip the rest. You already own a winner---look at fees and returns. You have the best already. I forgot you don't like Wells Fargo. GTSOX ... my bad. I was looking at other funds and thought I remembered the ER....oops!....bad me! One too many longnecks. Love your post with all the funds you list----always enjoy looking them up.
God bless
the Pudd