It’s totally rational to seek out the best managers to guide your portfolio assets. On the other hand, I’ve always thought that the financial media’s obsession with “best” mutual fund managers (abetted, of course, by the mutual fund industry, which covets those accolades) is kind of crazy.
What constitutes “best”? Usually, it’s performance. Sometimes the basis for the selection is the absolute performance for the time period measured, often a quarter or a year; sometimes, it’s risk-adjusted performance. Less common is performance over a long time period. Although some arbiters of “best” do weigh the long term more heavily than others, and some take fees into consideration, which can knock great performance down to mediocre quite easily.
Morningstar’s Best Managers
So with that meandering preamble, I bring you respected Morningstar’s honorees as the best fund managers of 2016.
