26 BARRON’S February 22, 2021
If ever there was a year for active
managers to prove their mettle, it was
last year. Granted, investors who rode it
out in an index fund would have done
just fine: TheVanguard S&P 500
ETF (ticker: VOO) returned 18% in
2020. But it was a wild year for many
active funds—especially the more than
two dozen stock funds that returned at
least 100% in what is almost certainly
a first in the history of the industry.
Record-setting returns helped pro-
pel many of the top-ranked fund fami-
lies up the leaderboard in this year’s
Barron’sFund Family Ranking, based
on data from Refinitiv Lipper. But that
wasn’t the case for every company. In
fact, the No. 1-ranked fund family,
Manning & Napier, credits its strong
performance to asset allocation. The
runner-up, Guggenheim Investments,
took its spot thanks to a bold call on
the bond market.
The next two firms, No. 3-ranked
Vanguard and Fidelity Investments
at No. 4, are both massive fund com-
plexes but quite different when it
comes to their actively managed stock
funds: Vanguard relies primarily on
outside advisors, while Fidelity has
one of the largest in-house research
teams in the business.
Rounding out the top five, No. 5-
ranked Morgan Stanley Investment
Management—which debuted on our
ranking in 2019 at No. 47—made its
mark in 2020 thanks largely to its
Counterpoint Global team, which ush-
ered five different funds to returns
exceeding 100% for the year.
As has been the case for the past
two decades,Barron’sFund Family
Ranking looks at the one-year relative
performance of fund firms that offer a
diversified lineup of actively managed
mutual funds and ETFs. The ranking
eliminates index funds, so results are
based on firms’ skill in active manage-
ment. The ranking itself is purely
quantitative, yet behind the fund tick-
ers and track records are individuals.
They all have their own stories of relo-
cating to home offices and contending
with different strokes of personal
disruption—during the worst market
selloff in history and one of the fastest
TheBestFundFamiliesof2020
Our annual ranking of how fund companies fared in their actively
managed funds helps explain a highly unusual year in the markets
“When there’s
volatility,
there’s the
potential
to benefit.”
Ebrahim Busheri,
Manning & NapierA
t this point, 2020 needs
no introduction. In a sin-
gle year, the Covid-19 pan-
demic claimed millions
of lives around the world
and wiped out trillions
of dollars from the global
economy. It changed the way most
people work and live, and has left
a lasting imprint on virtually every
industry—including the asset manage-
ment firms that collectively oversee
about $29 trillion in mutual funds and
exchange-traded funds.
By SARAH MAX
Illustration byLARS LEETARU