2nd Quarter Stock Funds Soar

By Dian Vujovich

The last three months have been good to shareholders of many stock funds. The best returns were over 100 percent and the worst, down 78 percent.

Some stats ala Lipper: The second quarter of this year marked the first positive quarter of the past four for equity funds.

Bigger than that, it was their best return since the last quarter of 1999. Even bigger that that, over 98 percent of all equity and mixed-equity funds posted positive returns! Yahoo.

This quarter’s best performing fund is also this year’s best performer, and the best performer for the past 1- and 2-year periods. The fund is classified by Lipper as a multi-cap core fund and its name, drum roll please, the Oceanstone Fund. For the second quarter of 2009, it was up 134.14 percent; year-to-(quarter ending)-date, up 128.36 percent; for the last year, up 113.67 percent; and the past two years, up 44.01 percent.

I tried contacting the fund manager for an interview but had no luck. Checking its Web site a couple of things become crystal clear. First, the fund doesn’t have a lot of money—as in assets– and looks like it’s not a big believer in spending any of it on a Web site.

But far more important, investors researching the fund need to know that it’s a no-load, non-diversified fund that invests in U.S. stocks and uses a growth-at-a-reasonable-price (GARP) management strategy. Make sure to read its prospectus AND its semi-annual 12/31/08 shareholder report. In it you’ll find the stocks held in its portfolio at that time.

More 2nd quarter stuff from Lipper:

•World equity funds were the hottest equity category. Average one in it was up well over 26 percent. Following it, sector equity funds, ahead on average 21 percent; U.S. diversified funds, up 17 percent; and mixed-equity funds, up 14 percent

•One the other hand, for the quarter only 1 of the 78 different classifications in Lipper’s equity fund universe was in the tank: Dedicated short-bias funds gave up 25 percent. That’s an average return and where you’ll find funds down the most. The biggest downers off in the 60-78 percent range.