Skip to Content
Morningstar

This Silver-Rated Large Value Fund Is Worth a Look

This Silver-Rated Large Value Fund Is Worth a Look

Alec Lucas: Silver-rated John Hancock Disciplined Value benefits from stable management and consistent execution. Veteran investors Mark Donovan and David Pyle have worked together since 2000 and comanaged the fund since 2006. They make good use of Boston Partners' strong bench of quantitative and fundamental analysts in looking for stocks that combine attractive relative valuations, positive momentum—business as well as share price—and financial health.

The comanagers generally invest with a one- to two-year horizon and pay heed but not homage to the Russell 1000 Value Index in building the fund's roughly 70- to 100-stock portfolio. Indeed, they only overweight stocks in the benchmark and make sizable industry and sector bets when warranted via company-level research.

The fund currently favors banking stocks like Bank of America, which has more than tripled the index's return since management added it in early 2016. That's helped the fund outperform over the past year through January 2018, and its record over that year is in keeping with its long-term record. Fees could be more competitive, and the strategy's size limits its market-cap flexibility, but it is worth a look.

More in Funds

About the Author

Alec Lucas

Director of Manager Research
More from Author

Alec Lucas is director of manager research, active funds research, for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. He is a voting member of the Morningstar Medalist Ratings Committee for U.S. and international fixed-income strategies, covers fixed-income strategies from asset managers such as Baird and American Funds.

Lucas is also active in parent research. He is a voting member of the U.S. parent ratings committee and previously served as the lead analyst for Franklin Templeton, Capital Group, and Vanguard, among other firms.

Lucas was a strategist on Morningstar's equity strategies team prior to assuming his current role in June 2022. He covered equity strategies from asset managers such as Primecap and American Funds and received the 2019 Citywire Professional Buyer Rising Star Award.

Before joining Morningstar in 2013, Lucas worked as a minister as well as a professor for Loyola University Chicago, among other institutions. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Heidelberg.

Lucas holds bachelor's degrees in philosophy and classics from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he graduated summa cum laude and with departmental honors, and a Master of Divinity, summa cum laude, from Trinity International University. He also holds a doctorate in theology, with distinction, from Loyola University Chicago and has published several articles and one book within that field.

Sponsor Center