The Daily Screen: Small-Cap Growth Funds With Long-Tenured Managers

It's not easy to find a small-cap growth fund with a manager who's beaten his or her peers and stayed put, but that's the beast we're hunting today.

Usually the Daily Screen combs through a different fund category each day, sifting for those funds that beat their average peer over the last one- and three-year time periods. But this week, we're changing the rules a bit by adding manager tenure into the mix. After all, a little experience is usually comforting, especially in a market as tough and messy as this one.

We're starting with small-cap growth funds, and this is an area where a little extra time on the job can be a big boost. Small-caps or stocks with market capitalizations below $1.5 billion aren't typically covered as thoroughly by Wall Street analysts as mega-caps like General Electric or Cisco Systems. That often leaves fund managers and their staffs to rely more heavily on their own work. And the quality of that work is, as always, important, because small-cap stocks are often the equivalent of a home-run swing. Because they're often stocks of younger, less stable companies, they can lead to big returns but also big losses. Though Microsoft was once a small-cap stock, many other shops fade into the ether. ...