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20 Fund Upgrades From 2017

These funds are movin' on up.

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of Morningstar FundInvestor. Download a complimentary copy of FundInvestor here.

Mutual funds are long-term vehicles. But the money management world doesn't sit still, and neither do our Morningstar Analyst Ratings. We keep an eye out for changes in management, strategy, fees, parent company, and returns and update our Analyst Ratings accordingly.

The changes are often subtler with ratings upgrades than downgrades, where manager departures can generate a lot of drama. An upgrade can be based on seeing a manager gradually prove himself. An upgrade can reflect additional research we've done that convinces us of a fund's merits or falling expense ratios that underscore a fund's strengths.

I've chosen 20 funds that grew in our esteem over 2017. Let's begin with funds that were raised to Gold.

Newly Silver

To Bronze From Neutral There is no set time period for a manager to prove his or her skill, but we frequently start seeing signs of skill as well as luck around the five-year mark. It varies quite a bit from fund to fund, though, as a manager's analyst team and strategy can be just as important as a manager's past record elsewhere.

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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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