Most mutual fund investors would love to put their money in a fund - and then forget about it.
That's exactly what you can do with these five funds. They're steady performers, so they won't top the charts for any one-year period. But you can expect them to keep on winning for a decade or two.- BRANDYWINE (three-year annualized return as of July 1, 16.5 percent; call 800-338-1579 for a prospectus).
This no-load fund has never had a losing year. The worst you can say about Brandywine is that it takes $25,000 to get in the door.
- COPLEY (three-year return, 15.7 percent; 508-674-8459).
It's a mutual fund, sort of. It's also an operating company, kind of. And it's an IRA, of a sort.
What makes Copley different is handbag company Stuffco International. Irving Levine, Copley's president and portfolio manager, has combined Stuffco with the fund to create an operating corporation.
The consequences for investors are clear: Copley never needs to distribute its income, so odds are you won't be asked by the IRS to pay taxes on your gains until you sell shares.
- FIDELITY MAGELLAN (three-year return, 16.9 percent; 800-544-8888).
Even with a whopping $26.5 billion in assets, Jeff Vinik, who succeeded Morris Smith as manager last year, turned in a 15.6 percent return in the first half of '93; the S&P earned 4.9 percent.
- INVESTMENT COMPANY OF AMERICA (three-year return, 11.3 percent; 800-421-9900).
Fifty-nine-year-old ICA insists it is content to aim for solid returns unmarked by home runs or errors. You'd have to go back to 1977 to find a year in which ICA didn't earn a positive return.
- VANGUARD INDEX TOTAL STOCK MARKET (one-year return, 15.5 percent; 800-635-1511).
This relatively new fund carries the theory of passive investing about as far as it'll go by attempting to match the performance of the entire U.S. stock market.
As such, long-term investors can smooth out many ups and downs caused by investing fads and the popularity of one sort of stock versus another.