Paradigm Opportunity Protects Investors in Tough Times

Looking ahead, Ronovech is keen on two holdings in the Paradigm Opportunity Fund's portfolio. The first is QLogic (QLGC), a provider of components like input/output adapters that help connect server and storage networks.

"The business has grown with the server industry and QLogic is the market leader," Ronovech explains. "They have the strongest business model by far." What excited Ronovech most about the company is how QLogic has expanded its product portfolio to offer these adapters to the Ethernet market, which significantly expand its market.

"If you continue to see steady growth in the server industry as the economy recovers, QLogic should do fine," he says, "but if I'm right about the new market opportunity for them, it should kick the company up to a new level in terms of market valuation perspective."

Ronovech is also a fan of Convergys (CVG), which operates customer management programs for a number of different companies across telecom, cable, financial-services and technology industries.

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"I like that they brought in a new CEO two years ago who really tightened the operations," Ronovech says. "In 2011, you started to see their call-center volumes accelerate, their margins expand and the earnings from that business accelerate. The CEO also divested a number of non-core assets. I believe they're going to aggressively buy back their shares and return capital to shareholders. If you see that, plus if the call center business continue to improve, the market should be willing to pay a higher price for Convergys."

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1. To be eligible for consideration, an open-end mutual fund needed at least a three-year history on Dec. 31, 2011, and still be accepting new assets from retail investors; for exchange traded funds, a one-year history.

2. Half of the rating is based on performance metrics, including total return minus expenses, with a weighting to give long-term performance greater emphasis.

3. The other half of the rating is based upon risk metrics, including standard deviation, size of trough-to-peak (drawdown factor), semi-standard deviation and beta. The lower the risk, the better.

4. Top and runner-up funds and ETFs were selected in a variety of categories (funds and ETF were placed in categories via Lipper data).

-- Written by Robert Holmes in Boston.

Disclosure: TheStreet's editorial policy prohibits staff editors, reporters and analysts from holding positions in any individual stocks.

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