A prominent mutual fund analyst is cautiously endorsing growth stock funds as a prospective top-performing investment in 1995.

Michael Lipper, president of Lipper Analytical Services Inc., also said inflation-hedge funds such as those that invest in gold-mining and real-estate companies "will be attractive."Lipper, whose firm reports on and analyzes fund performance, omitted money-market funds, a traditional haven in tough investment years like 1994, from his list of '95 picks.

Money funds stand to finish 1994 with a better return than both stock and bond funds for the first time in at least 15 years.

Most stock and bond funds have flat or negative total returns, including both net asset value changes and dividends, going into the final weeks of the year.

Yields on money funds, meanwhile, have been rising all year and lately have been pushing close to 5 percent.

But even though he sees prospects for brighter days ahead for some categories of stock funds, Lipper warned against expecting a return to the all-out bull market conditions seen so often in the 1980s and early '90s.

"Speaking as an analyst, we need to remember that there have been long plateaus in the (stock) market," Lipper said at a year-end meeting with financial reporters.

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Lipper said preliminary figures collected by his firm indicate that stock funds had a modest outflow of money from investors in November.

Bond funds have been faced with a net cash drain since last spring. But until recently at least, stock funds have continued to attract large amounts of new money.

Lipper said he expects the fund business to keep growing, but at only about half the pace of recent years.

Assets invested in the nation's mutual funds reached the $1 trillion mark in 1990, some 66 years after the first fund began operating.

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