24 BARRON’S July 12, 2021
FUND PROFILE
Talking With Bill Nygren
Co-Manager, Oakmark Fund
NotYour
Average
ValueFund
Photograph byKEVIN SERNA
G
rowing up in St. Paul, Minn., veteran fund
manager Bill Nygren regularly pored over
the sports pages of the local newspaper,
especially the baseball statistics.
Next to the sports pages was the busi-
ness section, which contained stock quotes.
He didn’t initially understand those num-
bers, but his father—who worked in the finance depart-
ment at local company 3M—explained their meaning.
“When I found out the numbers represented dollars, it
became much more interesting,” he says.
Nygren remains an avid baseball fan, devoted to the
Minnesota Twins and the Chicago Cubs, and he plays on
the softball team of his firm, Harris Associates. But he
does a lot more than just read stock quotes these days:
Nygren has played a key role in running the $17 billion
Oakmark Fund (ticker: OAKMX) for more than two
decades—and with stellar results.
As of July 2, the fund had a 15-year annual return of
11.3%, placing it in the top 2% of Morningstar’s large-cap
value category. It carries an expense ratio of 0.91%,
around average for the category.
It’s also near the top of its peer group based on one-,
three-, five-, and 10-year returns. In late 2020, the fund
was moved to the large-value category from large blend
because of certain methodology changes, according to
Morningstar.
Still, Nygren, 62, isn’t a traditional deep-value inves-
tor who focuses exclusively on dirt-cheap or distressed
companies. His holdings include megatech companies
like Facebook (FB), Netflix (NFLX), and Alphabet
(GOOGL)—hardly typical value names—though, he
notes, “We don’t want to pay more than two-thirds of
what we think the business is currently worth.”
Nygren, who joined Harris Associates in 1983 with an
undergraduate degree in accounting from the University
By LAWRENCE C. STRAUSS