Five Funds: Small Growth Funds With Supersized Returns

3. (BGRFX Quote)Baron Growth

An offering with a similar M.O. is the $941 million-in-assets Baron Growth fund. Like Meridian, it has an assured skipper, below-average costs and a great track record.

Ron Baron, at the helm since the no-load fund's 1995 inception, has shied away from the pricey tech sector, which has kept returns steady and better than peers. The fund's one-year return of negative 18.59% and three-year average annual return of negative 3.5% are among the top 3% and 5% of its peers, respectively. Over five years, it has returned a positive 4.21%, good for the top 11%.

Baron Growth holds 85 companies under its hood, but the skipper isn't afraid to take bigger bets on individual stocks, such as doughnut king Krispy Kreme(KKD Quote) and auto-insurance service outfit Choicepoint(CPS Quote).

The fund sports a below-average 1.35% expense ratio.

4. (VEXPX Quote)Vanguard Explorer

Vanguard Explorer delivers on just what you would expect: low costs.

The $3.76 billion-in-assets fund has an expense ratio of 0.72%, but that is far from its only virtue. For that low price, you get a seasoned roster of five managers -- including John J. Granahan and George Sauter among the subadvisers Vanguard hires for Explorer -- with a combined 35 years at the helm. You also get short- and long-term performance above the category average. The fund's three-, five- and 10-year returns (8.13% average annual) hover around the top quartile of its category, according to Morningstar.

The fund holds a massive 900 stocks, which makes it an ad hoc low-cost small-cap growth index. No company makes up more than 1% of the fund, so blowups are tempests in a teacup here. For investors looking for one-stop exposure to small-cap growth that offers decent returns and keeps volatility in check, Vanguard Explorer is a sound option.