Commentators often vilify the biggest players in the fund industry as too powerful and for failing to act in the best interests of their shareholders, Morningstar portfolio analyst Amy Arnott wrote in a recent blog post.
But an analysis Arnott conducted of U.S.-based mutual funds and ETFs in the Morningstar database showed that the largest funds and fund families have increased dollar value for shareholders. She created a ranking, focusing on those that experienced the biggest increase in asset size over the 10 years ending in 2024 after subtracting total inflows and outflows over the same period.
The resulting number for each fund reflects how much growth it has created from market appreciation in dollars, she said.
Arnott noted that her analysis did not include ETFs in the taxable bond and municipal bond category groups, or ETFs in the energy limited-partnership Morningstar category because their income distributions would have complicated matters for her inflow/outflow calculations.
Her study also focused on results for long-only shareholders invested directly in each fund, but it did not capture changes in wealth for investors who used the funds in other ways.
See the gallery for the 15 funds that created the most value over the past decade. All are large, well-established names, and most are among the biggest funds in the industry ranked by asset size. One-year performance is as of Jan. 29.
Slide images: Chris Nicholls/ALM
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