Fund Times: Dodge & Cox Reopens Two Great Funds to New Investors

Another veteran value shop is reopening funds to take advantage of opportunities in the market.

San Francisco-based Dodge & Cox reopened  Dodge & Cox Stock (DODGX) and  Dodge & Cox Balanced (DODBX) to new investors Monday. The funds had been closed for about four years, but the firm has said that its stock and balanced funds have been experiencing net redemptions since the first half of 2007. At the same time, stock and bond market volatility over the last several months have created what Dodge & Cox called in a statement "many interesting long-term equity and fixed income opportunities." The firm decided to reopen the funds to balance the outflows with new money so that it could buy attractive stocks and bonds without selling existing positions.

Dodge & Cox reopened its funds a couple of weeks after  Longleaf Partners (LLPFX) reopened to the general public for similar reasons. Both reopenings present great opportunities to invest with some of the most experienced and skilled value managers. Read about Longleaf's reopening here.

Like Longleaf, both Dodge & Cox Stock and Balanced are coming off rough years during which a number of individual stock picks hampered performance. Both funds still have long-term appeal, though. They have deep, seasoned management teams that rely on rigorous fundamental research to pick stocks and bonds that the managers think are going to be worth more in five or more years than they are now. The Stock and Balanced funds are among the biggest in their categories because they continued to take in money from existing investors even after they closed in 2004. But their patient and contrarian style is conducive to running large sums of money. Furthermore, Dodge & Cox has an exemplary corporate culture that puts the interest of its clients first.