Free Advice from All-Star Managers

[Morningstar]

Free Advice from All-Star Managers

Mutual fund managers' letters can provide valuable insight.

With another round of quarterly and semiannual shareholder letters coming from the mutual fund world, we again turn our attention to our all-stars for free advice. Mutual funds are required to publish quarterly reports, and many portfolio managers take the time to express their opinions about what happened in the market and where they believe opportunities exist. This quarter, we examined 15 mutual funds' holdings and 13 mutual fund letters (Olstein's Robert Olstein and Sequoia's Robert Goldfarb and David Poppe have not issued letters to date) to see what we can glean from their stock maneuvers and what is weighing on the minds of the portfolio managers.

In choosing our superstar team for the quarter, we looked for managers who proclaim a style similar to our own: looking for stocks that trade below their estimated intrinsic values and providing investors a margin of safety. These managers follow the examples set by Ben Graham and Warren Buffett. We are not endorsing these mutual funds, but rather we simply believe that the investment philosophies behind them mimic our own. If you would like to read the individual letters, we have attached the links in the table below.

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