Investing
When Bad Things Happen to Good Funds
A strong long-term record isn’t enough to hold on to investors.
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William Nygren has succeeded at a difficult task: picking stocks to deliver market-beating returns over long stretches of time. Both his $16.5 billion Oakmark Fund and his $5.6 billion Oakmark Select Fund have topped the S&P 500 by an annual average of more than a percentage point over the past 15 years. Even so, investors pulled billions of dollars from his two big mutual funds last year.
Other funds with strong long-term track records, including the $61.6 billion Dodge & Cox Stock Fund and the $36 billion Fidelity Growth Company Fund, also had substantial net redemptions in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.