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3 Funds Run by Top Managers

3 Funds Run by Top Managers

Russ Kinnel: Hi, I’m Russ Kinnel, director of manager research for Morningstar. We don’t give out a lot of High People ratings, so let’s look at what it takes to get a High People rating. Simply being experienced or having a lot of analysts around the globe doesn’t cut it. It takes elite managers and analysts with a true competitive advantage to earn a High People rating.

Pimco Total Return is team effort from one of the best bond shops around. Scott Mather, Mark Kiesel, and Mohit Mittal are three outstanding managers. But importantly, Pimco has a deep team of analysts and traders to support the fund. That's really important because it's a wide-ranging fund that invests all over the globe and makes full use of derivatives, so you really need that depth to make it work.

Brown Capital Management Small Company shows that you don't need a massive firm to get a High People rating. Keith Lee and Kempton Ingersol are seasoned managers who know how to pick growth stocks. Brown exemplifies how smaller firms can develop expertise in a niche area that rivals that of the giants.

Dodge & Cox Global has a deep group of analysts and managers. What really stands out here is the long-term focus of the firm and the investment process. Dodge & Cox hires very smart investors, and they typically stay at the firm their entire career. Dodge lets key employees buy ownership of the firm, but they have to sell when they leave. That incentivizes them to stay, and it also ensures that outsiders can't buy the firm.

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About the Author

Russel Kinnel

Director
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Russel Kinnel is director of ratings, manager research, for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. He heads the North American Medalist Rating Committee, which vets the Morningstar Medalist Rating™ for funds. He is the editor of Morningstar FundInvestor, a monthly newsletter, and has published a number of prominent studies of the fund industry covering subjects such as manager investment, expenses, and investor returns.

Since joining Morningstar in 1994, Kinnel has analyzed virtually every type of fund and has covered the most prominent fund families, including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and Vanguard. He has led studies on the predictive power of fund data and helped develop the Morningstar Rating for funds and the Morningstar Style Box methodology. He was co-author of the company's first book, Morningstar Guide to Mutual Funds: 5-Star Strategies for Success (Wiley, 2003), and was author of the book Fund Spy: Morningstar's Inside Secrets to Selecting Mutual Funds That Outperform, published in 2009.

Kinnel holds a bachelor's degree in economics and journalism from the University of Wisconsin.

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