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Anybody Own Any Funds That Bettered the S&P 500 Index?

edited January 2015 in Fund Discussions
Of the forty funds which I own, some of them being hybrid type funds, and fall outside of the income area of my portfolio ... I had five funds that bettered the S&P 500 Index over the past twelve months. They were THOAX, TOLLX, BWLAX, VADAX & IACLX. This means that only 12.5% of the funds that I own were able to beat the cap weighted S&P 500 Index. Granted, many of these funds are benchmarked against something else so this is perhaps not a fair analysis; but, it is what it is. In my large mid cap sleeve which consist of six funds, fifty percent of them (three) bettered the Index. They were BWLAX, VADAX & IACLX.

Did you own funds that bettered the Index? And, if so what were they?

Have a great new year ... and, I wish all "Good Investing."

Old_Skeet
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Comments

  • Yes: POAGX, FSPHX, VGHCX (this should be fun - hope you are referring to SPY with 13.75% from Yahoo or 13.46% from M*:-) ).
  • ACMVX up 14.65%.
  • TedTed
    edited January 2015
    @Old-Skeet: The S&P 500 Index returned 13.69%, 11.39% raw, and 2.3% in dividends. I own 7 funds, of the seven the following 4 beat the S&P 500:

    1. FBTCX: 33.35%
    2. PRHSX: 31.44%
    3. QQQ: 19.16%
    4. PFF: 14.10%
    ----------------
    5. SPY: 13.46%
    6. VWELX: 9.82%
    7 FTHCX 9.62%
    Regards,
    Ted
  • beebee
    edited January 2015
    GASFX = 21%
    MINDX = 64%
    VGSIX = 30%
    GLFOX = 17.6%
    OAKLX = 15.4%
    TOLSX = 18%
  • edited January 2015
    Nope. None. Not even DODGX. And certainly not FAAFX.

    Next year. Go Yanks!

    @Ted and bee. Congrats on those very strong holdings. Well done!

    c
  • Getting back to apples-apples, PRBLX did, it says here --- not sure I believe that, will doublecheck --- and DSENX.

    Skeet, you know 40 is too many in the sense of outdoing an average (he opined, unasked).
  • The two funds that I own which track closest to the S&P 500 index would be FCNTX and YAFFX. Both were not even close.
  • Suspect not many funds beat the SP500 this year. Applicable comparison or not.

    A revenge year for the buy & hold investors =).

    And those that didn't think too much.

    And, to a the 10-month SMA trend investors.
  • S & P up 11.4%.
    PRWCX (balanced fund) up 12.25% for '14.
    MEASX +17.39% for '14.
    No, it's not at all "apples to apples."
  • PJP 29.62
    RHS 18.82
    VNQ 27.85
    XLP 15.72
    CMTFX 16.97
    FBTIX 34.7
    FRUAX 25.42
    PHSZX 35.42
    VPCCX 19.29

    Only negative ones were foreign, both developed and emerging, but emerging lost less than last year:)
  • Wow. Well done slick!
  • edited January 2015
    PRHSX, VHCOX, and POAGX
    Honorable mention: BRUFX at 13.68% (actually had to distribute capital gains this year)
  • VPCCX (19.29) and BRAGX (14.99). They're my biggest and second biggest holdings, but three and four (FAIRX and FAAFX) more than compensated, alas. I'm with Charles waiting for the Great Fairholme Pumpkin. I also own a little DSENX in a Roth IRA, but it's too small a position to move the needle much.
  • POAGX is the biggest position in my portfolio and I hold HQL, PRHSX and MEASX as well. Unfortunately, and I think Charles got it right, it was a tough year for the other 80% of my funds, even in the few cases when they were large cap funds.

    All in all it was a tough year compared to the S&P, but I'll take some comfort in the fact that I was overweight most of the bad places to be this year, small caps especially, but I beat the category average 75% of the time and was in the top 20% of peer funds 55% of the time. Its the consolation prize that hopefully pays some dividends when we look back a few years from now :)
  • @joe74 mentions a good point. There were a number of funds that were poised to beat the index but distributions took that honor away.

    That's the way the ball bounces.

  • @Charles,

    In all fairness, it represents only about 25% of my retirement portfolio, where i have most of my equity exposure. Have no bonds in the IRAs, I hold them in taxable account. That means 75% of my equity exposure (which includes some stocks) did not beat the S + P. I use etfs for some sector additional exposure, hold no S + P or total market indexes. I prefer managed funds despite the odds agains them consistently beating the index
  • Lipper says SP500 did 13.7% for 2014, M* sez 13.69%. DSENX beat that by 4%. Anyone got a broad large-cap fund whose benchmark is SP500 that beat DSENX? PRBLX did, 14.49%. M* basic screener lists hundreds but with enormous numbers of dupes. It would be interesting to eliminate the dupes and see. My quick look of all discrete large-caps that beat DSENX totals maybe 20, with several Vanguard.
  • edited January 2015
    Looks like PRBLX (14.48 per Parnassus, 14.49 per M*) beat the S&P but not DSENX (17.70 per M*), but the other Parnassus large cap U.S. fund, PARWX, beat both (18.50 M*, 18.51 Parnassus).

    Also, VFTSX, Vanguard's SRI index fund based on the S&P, beat Vanguard's version of the full standard index (15.75 vs. 13.64 per M*), and leads it for 3 and 5 years now too. Lower fossil fuel % and a higher health care % probably account for most of the difference.

    I own PARWX but not PRBLX, VFTSX, or DSENX (yet ...).
  • @davidrmoran: VPCCX did (and it beat DSENX too), but yes, it's a Vanguard fund. I own DSENX thanks to your bringing it up on these discussion boards and then my doing some research on it. Thanks again. Wish I'd bought more of it...
  • David M.: I just ran the premium M* screen for funds that beat DSENX in 2014, which lets you add "distinct portfolio only" to the criteria, eliminating all the dupes, and it returned 18 distinct funds. Then I added a screen of "M* risk equal to or below average" and a grand total of 6 met the criteria:

    BRLGX
    PARWX
    PEWIX
    SDLAX
    VPCCX
    VPMCX

    Of course the risk screen bumped out any of the 18 that were less than 3y old (minimum age for a M* return/risk rating). One of those that looked interesting, in an MFO-kinda way, is a 1 y.o. Nuveen fund, NCADX - concentrated value, 20 holdings.

    I'm not exactly sure how the "distinct portfolio only" screen works; it returns only one share class, yes, but I'm not sure how it picks the one ... maybe it's the oldest one.

    Anyhow, just mental gymnastics, but possibly a little illuminating ...
  • You have to be careful with distinct portfolio only. I believe it is based on the oldest and/or largest share class. But the real problem with it is that it's inflexible - these are preset classes.

    So, if you have a fund with two share classes, and one of them meets all your criteria, you would want that share class to appear in the query result. But if that wasn't the "favored" class, it won't show up, and the fund will be completely and erroneously omitted from the results.

    I'm not sure what other criteria you were using, because if I just screen on performance greater than DSENX and distinct portfolio, I get 199 funds. If I add US Equity (which screens out sectors like health, which has a lot of winners), I get 23, not 19.

    To show you the problem with "distinct portfolio only", if I remove that criterion, I get 47 different share classes, including 24, not 23 distinct funds. The distinct portfolio eliminated Goldman Sachs Large Cap Growth Insights, Institutional Class (GCGIX). And it meets your added criterion of risk not above average. (Its risk is average.)

    Likely the share class favored by distinct portfolio only was the higher cost A class (GLCGX), which fell just short of DSENX in 2014 performance.
  • I had only 2 that beat the S&P500 this year:

    Janus Contrarian JSVAX +17.32%
    Bridgeway Aggressive Growth + 14.99%

    Now, having dutifully answered the question at hand, I have 2 related questions:

    1. Why did the big Vanilla Indexes do so well in 2014?

    2. Why have they done so badly over the past 15 years? ( e.g. VOO +4.24% annualized)


  • edited January 2015
    msf said:

    I'm not sure what other criteria you were using ...

    U.S. large blend, growth, OR value, because the post was in response to David's search for "discrete large-caps that beat DSENX." On that basis, his guesstimate of 20 was good.

    Right, a distinct-portfolio-only search can kick out some funds that should pass if the share class M* references has, say, a higher E.R. than another share class not referenced. For anyone who's looking for every possible fund to research, I don't know of any shortcut to doing the full search and sorting through all the share classes that come up. Msf, do you know of any other way to simplify a search like that?
  • I thought that's what you might be using, but the 23 I got included only two midcaps and a small cap - the rest were large caps. So I saw 20 US large blend, growth, or value.

    FWIW (and remembering that this omits the Goldman Sachs fund):
    1. MRLIX
    2. BRLGX - you highlighted
    3. BUFDX
    4. CPEAX
    5. CLPAX
    6. DSEEX - notice that the institutional class (the "distinct portfolio") outperformed DSENX
    7. GTLLX
    8. LEVIX
    9. NCADX - you mentioned in text
    10. PARWX - you highlighted
    11. PEWIX - you highlighted
    12. RYOCX
    13. SDLAX - you highlighted
    14. NASDX
    15. TGFVX
    16. USNQX
    17. VCNIX
    18. VHCOX
    19. VPCCX - you highlighted
    20. VPMCX - you highlighted

    Even if we exclude DSEEX, there are still 19 distinct funds.

    I'm guessing is that your screen wasn't for US Large Cap Growth -or- US Large Cap Blend -or- US Large Cap Value.

    Rather, if one screens for US Funds -and- funds with current equity style of large cap, one gets 18 funds.

    CLPAX is missed, because it has a short history, and is currently just south of large cap. But M* calls it a large cap blend fund. DSEEX is missed because M* doesn't have any equity style data for the fund.

    Obviously one can screen however one wants. Knowing precisely what screen was used helps to understand which funds might have been inadvertently excluded. That's a point you were making where you wrote about the limitations of screening on risk.
  • edited January 2015
    I screened exactly as I described; our difference of ONE fund (18 vs. 19) came about like this: One of the funds listed in the results showed a lower return than the Dbl fund, and I excluded that one from the count, thinking there must have been an error in the screening. I didn't notice Dbl-Shiller had come up as the I shares, so that was my error. That's the only difference in the results between my post and the last one of yours.

    From your post, it sounds like you may think the six specific funds I listed are the only ones that passed the "large cap that beat Dbl-Shiller in 2014" screen. If so, that is not the case; the six are the ones that passed with the added risk screen, as described, I thought clearly, in my post.

    And now I think the subject has been flogged sufficiently.
  • Bring on 2015!
  • AJ and msf, tyvm!

    Now I must check most of these (not the tech ones; I already excluded them in my mind) to see how they did during the two '14 dips compared with DSENX and PRBLX.

    Can't believe I am researching this because on paper I give no cred to 1y performance. He said.
  • Four Healthcare Funds
    3-FIDO-1-JANUS.....enough said.
    GASFX - been selling into strength all year; have small position left (great move dumbass!)
    GLFOX - shout out to Scott.....great call! must talk with and listen more to you.
    PRBLX
    LCPAX - the one I'm most proud of....who would've thunk it?!
    God bless!
    the Pudd
  • Many of the older funds on the long list above had brutal 08-09 dips; the rest are way too new to evaluate, really. Now will try to analyze '14 dip performance.
  • past year or 2, S&P has been good over most....
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