3 Funds Run by Great Up-and-Comers

Susan Dziubinski: Hi, I'm Susan Dziubinski for Morningstar. Last month, we introduced the Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence. We nominated several topnotch professionals for the Rising Talent Award. Here's a look at some of the nominees and their funds.

Emory Zink: A few factors contribute to our confidence in core bond manager Pramod Atluri. First, prior to his appointment at Capital Group in late 2015, Atluri gained experience as a credit analyst and comanager at Fidelity Investments. Between his experience at Fidelity and at Capital Group, he gained valuable insight at two substantial core bond shops. Second, over his tenure at Capital Group, he integrated smoothly with their collaborative culture, and he simultaneously managed to introduce new perspectives for managing and monitoring risks in portfolios. These positive attributes support his appointment as a principal investment officer at the end of this year when he succeeds long-tenured manager John Smet as the lead portfolio manager on the firm's core bond offering American Funds Bond Fund of America.

Jack Barry: Vincent Montemaggiore manages Silver-rated Fidelity Overseas and has since 2012. His process stands out for a number of reasons. First, he takes a quality value-oriented approach that looks for companies with sustainable competitive advantage, high returns on invested capital and recurring revenues, and pricing power. These types of companies have given the portfolio durability through tough markets. He has also shown that he is adept at picking stocks throughout sectors. Morningstar attribution data shows that he's been successful on all the GICS sectors, which also bodes well for the portfolio's ability to hold up in tough market environments. Additionally, he searches out under-the-radar ideas, particularly in the small- and mid-cap stocks, which makes him stand out from peers and the MSCI EAFE benchmark. Finally, Montemaggiore is an introspective investor, well aware of the psychological traps that most investors fall prone to. In order to prevent against those traps, he keeps a journal of all of his investment theses, which he regularly visits to make sure that he avoids thesis creep.

Alec Lucas: Pasadena, California-based Primecap Management's James Marchetti is the inaugural winner of Morningstar's Rising Talent Award for Investing Excellence. He is part of a five-person team at Primecap that manages three strategies for Vanguard and three Odyssey-branded funds. Four of the six funds are closed to new investors. The two ones that are open are Primecap Odyssey Growth and Primecap Odyssey Stock. All six funds are rated Gold by Morningstar analysts because of their superior long-term prospects. The strategies have been out of favor over the past year but have very good long-term track records. Marchetti himself is very experienced. He joined Primecap in 2005 and made his way as a biotech analyst and then has proven himself as one of the firm's portfolio managers over the past few years, and he is certainly a manager to be aware of as is the firm.