What do your mutual fund managers eat? The answer to that question can help you assess the attractiveness of various funds. I'm not referring to preferences for Krispy Kreme doughnuts over Brussels sprouts (though that, too, might not bode well for long-term performance). Instead, I'm referring to the fund's home cooking.
Mutual fund managers have money of their own to invest. And where they invest it can reveal a lot. If they invest heavily in their own fund (which you might think of as "eating their own cooking"), that's a promising sign: They must have some confidence in its growth prospects. If they don't, that raises a critical and troubling question: Why not?
In a recent commentary, Roy Weitz of FundAlarm.com addressed this issue, noting new regulations that will require money managers to disclose how much they have invested in their own funds (beginning Feb. 28). This new rule is good for investors.
Weitz summarized some findings from a look at Putnam's five largest funds (Putnam has been making public its managers' ownership levels for a while now). At the Putnam Fund for Growth and Income (FUND:PGRWX), the three listed fund managers each had between $100,000 and $500,000 invested in their fund. Less impressively, at the George Putnam of BostonFund (FUND:PGEOX), the lead manager had just $10,000 to $50,000 invested, and one of the assistant managers had between $50,000 and $100,000, while the other two assistants had zero.
Of course, one useful bit of information isn't included in these disclosures -- the managers' total assets. If we knew that a manager was worth $3 million and had just $100,000 invested in his fund, we might rightly be more concerned than we'd be about a manager worth $1 million with $100,000 invested. It's safe to say that most fund managers with at least several years of tenure have been compensated fairly well and should be worth more than the average American -- but new managers may not yet have built up considerable wealth. Still, it doesn't look good when some managers have nothing at all invested in funds through which they're ostensibly building wealth for customers to the best of their abilities, by selecting the most promising investments they find.
Fortunately, there are many great funds out there and many managements that solely eat their own cooking, such as the Longleaf fund family, which runs the well-respected Longleaf PartnersFund (FUND:LLPFX), among others. At the Oakmark fund family website, you'll read: "We believe in 'eating our own cooking' and encourage employee ownership of the Funds. As evidence of this commitment, the employees of the Funds' adviser, Harris Associates L.P., and the Funds' officers and trustees have over $145 million invested in The Oakmark Funds."
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Longtime Fool contributor Selena Maranjian does not own shares of any companies mentioned in this article.
