A Decade of S&P 500 Outperformance

If consistency of performance is an important criterion for picking an equity mutual fund, 2008 isn't going to give you much to choose from, as it doesn't look like any stock fund will end the year with a respectful string of positive annual returns.

But some equity and stock-bond "hybrid" funds have great chances of celebrating the new year with 10-year streaks of beating the S&P 500 total-return index.

The five funds in the accompanying table have bested the S&P's performance in each of the past nine calendar years and, although in negative territory, still remain ahead of the popular market gauge for the first 10 months of 2008. If they can maintain their leads over the benchmark for the remainder of the year, they will be members of an exclusive club of funds that has outperformed the S&P 500 for each of 10 consecutive calendar years. ...