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April 01, 2007 at 04:00 AM
The financial services industry has recently come under some harsh and unwelcome glare in light of the ongoing collapse of the subprime mortgage lending sector. However, financial services represents a very broad and highly diversified business, including insurance, banks, asset management, real estate, and many others. Investors are drawn to financial services stocks–accounting for the largest portion (21.31%) of the S&P 1500 index– because they typically provide high dividend yields, a stable income stream and relatively modest volatility.
The average financial services equity mutual fund has roughly matched the performance of the broader S&P 500 index over the past year, but has outperformed the index over the longer term.
One of the best performers in this arena, the Royce Financial Services Fund (RYFSX), focuses on mid-, small- and even micro-cap companies–the average market cap is $770 million. Lead manager Charles Royce had 108 positions as of year-end 2006, but kept turnover to 9%.
By sub-sector, the fund is dominated by financial intermediaries (55.9% of total assets at year end) and financial services (25.7%). Top five individual holdings comprised AllianceBernstein Holding (AB), KBW (KBW), Epoch Holding, Capital Trust (CT) and Highbury Financial.
