Four Low-Risk Mutual Funds

Looking for shelter from stormy markets? Here are four funds that limit your risk but offer the possibility of making you money over the long term.

These funds are substantially less volatile than their peers, and all but one made money during the 2000-02 bear market (the exception was Jensen fund, which lost 14%, compared with the S&P 500's 47% dive). Three of the four fund picks are concentrated, meaning that their managers invest in a small number of businesses in which they have a high degree of confidence.

Always in the black

Because the stock market goes down every so often, it's unusual for stock funds to go up every year. That's what sets T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation apart. The fund (symbol PRWCX) has produced black ink in each of the past 16 calendar years while delivering a generous annualized return of 13% (those gains, incidentally, beat the stock-only S&P 500 by an average of three percentage points per year). Year-to-date to September 17, the fund gained 5%.

Subscribe to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

Be a smarter, better informed investor.

Save up to 74%

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.

Sign up

In truth, Capital Appreciation is not a pure stock fund. It typically invests about two-thirds of its assets in bargain-priced stocks with above-average yields. The rest is currently in a mix of cash, bonds and convertible securities. David Giroux, who has been running the fund since July 2006, says he pays a great deal of attention to risk when he picks stocks. "We want to find a stock that's so washed out that there's not a lot of downside," he says. "We see a lot of value in the GEs and the US Bancorps of the world -- companies that are not exciting and not sexy to a large portion of the investing crowd."

Although Giroux's tenure at Capital Appreciation is brief, we see no reason to worry. Price is a collaborative firm with a reputation for grooming solid managers, and Giroux has been an analyst there for nine years.

Brand-name buyer

Quality rules at Jensen Portfolio. The fund requires the companies in which it invests to produce a return on equity (a measure of profitability) of at least 15% in each of the past ten years. If a current holding fails the 15% test, it's booted from the portfolio and banned for at least ten years. "We see it as an indication that the company's competitive advantage has eroded," says Bob Millen, one of four managers of the $2.2-billion fund (JENSX). This return-on-equity requirement narrows the fund's investment universe to 170 companies, only 25 to 30 of which make the final cut.

Jensen's disciplined strategy steers it toward big, brand-name companies, such as Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive and Procter & Gamble. The managers also favor companies that churn out plenty of cash and generate a large portion of revenues overseas. When the market favors more economically sensitive energy and technology companies, this portfolio of stable growers tends to lag other funds that focus on large-company growth stocks. (Lately, however, Jensen has been holding more technology stocks than usual.)

But Jensen rewards patient investors. The fund returned 8% annualized over the past decade, beating 80% of its rivals, and it did so with about one-fifth less volatility. It lost 14% during the 2000-02 bear market, a period when many large-company growth funds plunged 60% to 70% or more.

[page break]

Quality on the cheap

When the market is behaving badly, cash is king. Just ask Don Yacktman, head honcho at the Yacktman fund (YACKX). During the 2000-02 bear market, when the S&P 500 lost 47%, the fund gained 39% by holding cash-rich companies and keeping a fourth of its assets in greenbacks. At last report, the fund had 23% of its $339 million in assets in cash.

Yacktman looks for highly profitable businesses selling at bargain prices. He homes in on companies plagued by temporary problems that others believe will last forever. "These companies are like escalators, not moving sidewalks," says Yacktman, who has been managing one mutual fund or another since 1968. "They compound your money, and they tend to be relatively defensive." The fund's 31-stock portfolio is filled with large, consumer-oriented firms (together, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo make up nearly 20% of its assets).

Lately, Yacktman has been putting more cash to work and bargain-hunting among beaten-down financial stocks. Like Jensen, Yacktman is a fund best suited for long-term investors because its stock picks can take years to play out. The fund's 8% annualized return over the past decade beat the S&P 500 by an average of two percentage points a year.

Discount hunters

The three men who run Longleaf Partners International are bargain hunters through and through. Mason Hawkins, Staley Cates and Andrew McDermott, who have all been with the fund since its 1998 inception, buy a stock only when it is selling for at least 40% below their estimate of the underlying company's true value.

Aside from buying cheaply, the trio also reduce risk by hedging most of the fund's foreign-currency exposure. That means performance will depend on their stock-picking abilities rather than on currency fluctuations. (This policy hurts results relative to other overseas funds in years, such as 2006, when the dollar weakens.) The managers also tend to keep the fund's emerging-market exposure light and allow cash to build when they can't find stocks that meet their value criteria.

Unlike most foreign-stock funds, Longleaf International is willing to invest in U.S. companies with significant business overseas. At last report, two of the fund's 20 holdings -- Dell and Yum Brands -- fit that description, accounting for 13% of the fund's $3.6 billion in assets. Since its launch, Longleaf International (LLINX) has returned 16% annualized, an average of five percentage points per year better than the MSCI EAFE index.

SEE ALSO: 15 Stocks for Shelter in a Stormy Market