The 4 Smallest Medalists

Funds with small asset bases have some unique qualities that make them worth a look. I've chosen our four smallest Morningstar Medalists (excluding target-date funds) to give you some ideas. With funds like this, you can be sure the managers have a long runway to keep executing their strategy without being overwhelmed by assets. If you have chosen a good fund and it does perform well, you won't have the frustration of seeing it alter its style for a good while.

Small funds also have the maneuverability to make the most of less-liquid holdings like micro-cap names or other stocks with a small float. Many funds lose that ability as they get larger.

On the downside, small funds tend to have a couple of drawbacks. First, expenses are rarely low as the economies of scale simply aren't there. Second, small funds are more likely to be merged away if they remain so small that they are not profitable for the fund company to run or even if they are modestly profitable but the firm can still benefit from merging it into a larger fund.

Let's take a look at the four medalists ordered by asset base.

Cardinal Small Cap Value CCMSX--$38 million

The good news is this fund has an experienced management team and a decent 1.00% expense ratio. The bad news is that it is only available in a handful of sales channels that individual investors can access, so you'll need to check your brokerages to see if you can get in. If you can, this fund, which has a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Bronze, is an appealing focused portfolio of small-cap names. The managers seek out companies with high free cash flows and durable competitive advantages. They want those businesses to be trading at a sizable discount, however, and that explains why they end up in the small-blend box. The fund is only three years old, but management has a long track-record on this strategy in separate accounts.

Berwyn BERWX--$117 million

A slump has brought assets down sharply here, but this Bronze-rated fund still has appeal provided the rest of the shareholder base doesn't split. The firm has at least put in place a fee waiver to keep fees from rising above 1.24%. Manager Lee Grout invests primarily in micro-caps, so he's certainly making the most of the fund's small asset base. Grout seeks out companies with depressed share prices but a solid balance sheet that will carry them through tough times. Unfortunately, that led him to overweight materials and industrials, resulting in the performance slump. Still, these things go in cycles, and I could see this fund rebounding.

Causeway Global Value CGVVX--$122 million

It's exciting when a strong management team launches a new fund like this one. You may well know Gold-rated

Dodge & Cox Global Bond DODLX--$127 million

While a small asset base isn't particularly helpful for a wide-ranging investment-grade bond fund like this one, the fund also lacks the typical small-fund handicap of high fees. Dodge & Cox has waived fees in order to keep the fund at a low 0.45% expense ratio. Like