TheStreet.com Ratings: The Top 5 'Ultra' Funds

Editor's Note: TheStreet.com earlier this month announced the purchase of certain assets of Weiss Group to form "TheStreet.com Ratings." Here is the first article from Kevin Baker, senior financial analyst -- mutual funds. Let us know what you think of the article by clicking here.

Are you trying to figure out where to plant your retirement nest egg? Your adviser may have suggested picking a large fund family to maximize your mutual fund choices while minimizing your transaction costs. That's good advice, but simply having the most funds does not mean having the best funds.

How do you narrow down the list of hundreds of large fund families to the top-five "ultra" fund families?

Four times a year, TheStreet.com Ratings will publish a guide to stock mutual funds, which is a compilation of investment ratings and analyses covering more than 10,000 equity and balanced mutual funds. To be an "ultra" fund family, the fund group must compete in a king-of-the-hill-type competition to see which family can get the most funds onto our guide's list of the top 200 funds.

From the TheStreet.com Ratings' forthcoming summer survey, here are the top 5 "ultra" fund families.

MFS is the king of the hill with 13 separate funds in our top 200 list. Impressively, this was done with various share classes of six different funds.

The best of the bunch is the (MIDRX)MFS International New Discovery R3 fund, which ranks in the 94th percentile of its peers and boasts a three-year annualized total return of 28.6%.

As of July 31, the fund's top-three holdings include Aflac (AFL), Continental AG and British Energy Group, with the top-three country weightings of 17% Japan, 13.5% United Kingdom and 8.6% Germany.