The Top 10 Fund Value Creators and Destroyers

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A company's bottom line is its profits expressed in dollar terms. For mutual funds, we usually think of the bottom line in total return percentage figures. However, there's something to be said for looking at a mutual fund's results in dollar terms, too.

If you back out cash flows and simply look at how much value a fund created or destroyed for its shareholders, you effectively have the bottom line of the fund's investors. Once a year, I like to do this to see which funds made the most money for shareholders in dollar terms. Specifically, we're looking at how much the fund's portfolio appreciated or depreciated without the effects of inflows or outflows. In other words, what return did the fund's investments generate?

Value Creators

What I like about this measure is it shows which large funds were able to produce results after they became huge. To be sure, looking at it in dollar terms biases things in favor of the largest funds, but, hey, it's only a once-a-year thing.

Not surprisingly, American Funds, which dominates the list of biggest funds, also dominates the list of biggest value creators in a year when most stock funds had positive returns.

2005's Value Creators
	Category	Net Value ($Mil)	2005 Return
American Funds Growth Fund of America AGTHX	Large Growth	15,136	14.23%
American Funds EuroPacific Growth AEPGX	Foreign Large Blend	11,882	21.12%
Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX	Large Growth	7,901	16.23%
American Funds Capital World Growth & Inc CWGIX	World Stock	6,348	14.72%
American Funds Investment Comp of America AIVSX	Large Value	5,132	6.87%
Vanguard 500 Index VFINX	Large Blend	4,956	4.77%
Fidelity Diversified International FDIVX	Foreign Large Growth	4,654	17.23%
American Funds New Perspective ANWPX	World Stock	4,466	11.28%
Dodge & Cox Stock DODGX	Large Value	4,410	9.37
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index VTSMX	Large Blend	3,781	5.98
Morningstar data.