Skip to Content
Morningstar
Get 14 Days Free
Fund Spy: Morningstar Medalist Edition

Yacktman Focused's Markup Is Needless

A higher-than-necessary expense ratio holds this Silver-rated fund back.

Kevin McDevitt
Mentioned: , , , , ,

Similar funds from the same manager often receive the same Morningstar Analyst Rating. But that's not written in stone. Some readers may be surprised to see that two similar funds from the same management team can receive different ratings. That's the case with Silver-rated  Yacktman Focused (YAFFX) and Gold-rated  Yacktman (YACKX), in which the former's unnecessarily high expenses dim its appeal relative to its cheaper sibling.

It's difficult to see why Focused's 1.26% expense ratio is half a percentage point higher than sibling Yacktman's. The older Yacktman fund's asset base is about $1.3 billion greater than Focused's $9.3 billion, but that difference is immaterial given the economies of scale in asset management. In fact, of the 13 actively managed no-load large-blend funds with more than $5 billion in assets, none has a higher expense ratio than this one.

Kevin McDevitt does not own shares in any of the securities mentioned above. Find out about Morningstar’s editorial policies.

Transparency is how we protect the integrity of our work and keep empowering investors to achieve their goals and dreams. And we have unwavering standards for how we keep that integrity intact, from our research and data to our policies on content and your personal data.

We’d like to share more about how we work and what drives our day-to-day business.

We sell different types of products and services to both investment professionals and individual investors. These products and services are usually sold through license agreements or subscriptions. Our investment management business generates asset-based fees, which are calculated as a percentage of assets under management. We also sell both admissions and sponsorship packages for our investment conferences and advertising on our websites and newsletters.

How we use your information depends on the product and service that you use and your relationship with us. We may use it to:

  • Verify your identity, personalize the content you receive, or create and administer your account.
  • Provide specific products and services to you, such as portfolio management or data aggregation.
  • Develop and improve features of our offerings.
  • Gear advertisements and other marketing efforts towards your interests.

To learn more about how we handle and protect your data, visit our privacy center.

Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investor’s point of view. We also respect individual opinions––they represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.