Big Screen Archive: Solid Funds and How They Fit Together

Savvy fund investors stick with peer-beating funds and shoehorn them into diversified portfolios. So let's do that.

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The first part isn't too tough. Every week or so TheStreet.com's Big Screen sifts one fund category or another to help you whittle the long list of funds down to a few cheap, solid choices where tenured managers have consistently topped their peers and benchmarks over the years. This is a great start.

But anyone who spent the past two years loading up on tech- and tech-heavy growth funds -- no matter how well they're run -- can tell you that if you don't thoughtfully spread your money across a broad range of funds, you're in for a pretty harrowing ride.

To help you avoid that gaffe, we've cobbled together a blueprint of a diversified portfolio. We dissected the broad Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index to show you what percentage of your stock-fund money should be in various styles, such as large-cap growth vs. small-cap value, for instance, if you want a diversified or neutral portfolio. To see how much of your portfolio is sunk into each style today, check out Morningstar's handy and simple X-Ray tool.

To shop for a fund or two in categories you've ignored, just click on each style to see our most recent Big Screen's results in that bin. Beyond diversified U.S. stock funds, we've also included recent screens of other categories like sector funds, bond funds and foreign stock funds.

We'll publish this Big Screen archive with each week's Mutual Fund Monday package so you don't have to go hunting.

Solid Funds and How They Fit Together Blueprint for a diversified portfolio: Click on any style to see some solid choices
Diversified U.S. Stock Funds
Category	Percentage of a Diversified U.S. Stock Portfolio
Large-Cap Growth	35%
Large-Cap Value	35
Mid-Cap Growth	10
Mid-Cap Value	10
Small-Cap Growth	5
Small-Cap Value	5
Bond Funds/Other Stock Funds
Core Bond Funds
Sector Funds
Foreign Funds
Balanced Funds

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