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Oct 30, 2008 4:13 pm

Any thoughts on the best small-cap managers out there?  Need to manage public mutual funds (as opposed to only SMA’s or institutional money).  I have a long list based purely on returns from a screen I did, but I want to get some opinions.

Oct 30, 2008 4:29 pm

PCVAX - Allianz NFJ Small Cap Value

CSGEX - Blackrock Small Cap Growth     The Allianz fund had been closed, but they re-opened it due to this year.  Merrill Lynch had offered hundreds of millions to have them close it as of very recently, but they declined.  It won't stay open for very long supposedly, but it should be a soft close if you can get people into it, even at the minimum.
Oct 30, 2008 6:26 pm

Royce is a superb small cap shop.

Oct 30, 2008 6:32 pm

I’ll second Royce.  

Oct 30, 2008 6:53 pm

The Allianze fund is in our asset management model as well.  We also have Columbia, DWS, Neuberger B, Blackrock, Federated Kaufman, Alger, Oppy, and a few others.  Some of them are more Mid/Small.

  It's funny how most of the small cap names are from different houses than our mid-cap selection (Brandywine, Buffalo, Rainier, North Track, Hotchkis & W, etc.). 
Oct 30, 2008 8:39 pm

Keeley Small Cap Value KSCVX

Oct 31, 2008 12:26 am

I’ll second CSGEX for small cap growth and add Artisan’s small cap value ARTVX.

Oct 31, 2008 2:57 am

Keeley small cap value is better than most of those listed so far…

Oct 31, 2008 1:58 pm

Thanks for all the feedback.  All good ideas.  Some of these don’t come up on all screens for various reasons, but it’s good to know.  Does anyone know if Keeley SCV has a C share??  I can’t seem to find one.  I see A shares and I shares.

Oct 31, 2008 2:45 pm

No they only do A and I shares…

Oct 31, 2008 5:13 pm

Well ain’t that a problem.

Nov 1, 2008 4:28 pm

iShares Morningstar Small Cap Core

  The funds you described are like all funds...   They are the hot, easliy sold product of today.   Let's look at a few past examples of this theory -Legg Mason Value Trust -Calamos Growth -John Hancock Classic Value -Oppenheimer Rochester National Municipal -Kinetics Paradigm   The list goes on and on.  I'm sour on the mutual fund industry and mutual fund managers because they are designed to be sold easily and the theory behind "I manage managers and design portfolios built around the best managers of today" is bulls$%t.  How do you objectively know who the best manager of today is?  Past performance doesn't indicate future success!   I was just looking at Registeredrep and there were a lot of ads from mutual fund companies.  Companies like Van Kampen advertising funds I've never heard of that are mid cap, small cap, etc.  What happened to ACEIX.  Is that not the hot, easily sold fund it once was???   Save your clients the fees, invest in the indicies, create a precise asset allocation.   The market are just too effecient.    Sorry for the rant, I have just realized a lot of things I never did before. 
Nov 1, 2008 5:43 pm

Not to turn this into a index vs managed funds issue, but:



Over the last ten years the S&P has done nothing, so if you had $100K in the market in 98 chances are you may have $115K, now, maybe…



Keeley small cap value has toasted the index, and please don’t use any Van kampen funds as an example of anything unless you are talking about bad funds or EDJ

Nov 2, 2008 1:39 pm

Peacock, it is really accepted wisdom that small cap is a space that CAN be dominated with active management (versus the index). Personally, I would not want to own (via an index) 2000 different small caps that have never been vetted by a warm body. There’s too much to hide.



Now, on the large cap side (although I prefer active mgmt), I think using indexing strategies is fine, as there is not a tremendous advantage to active management (domestically) - there’s not a lot to hide in this space. However, I prefer active management to get out of the way of trainwrecks (where the indexes cannot). Unfortunately, for every instance that a manager avoids a calamity, they walk into another one on a flyer (and some managers concentrate their positions).

That’s why I like AMF for large-cap, as they are very good large-cap value managers, and they do not use concentrated positions. You just can’t use multiple funds in the same class with them.



And I agree, comparing most anything to the 500 is sort of stupid.