Funds Notebook: No. 1 Frontier Fund Not Exactly a Core Holding

The latest oddball fund to lead the pack this year is (FEFPX Quote)Frontier Equity. It's up 76.2% and is the year's top-returning fund through last Thursday. But it's expensive and looks an awful lot like a one-hit wonder.

The fund sports an ultra-steep 8% sales charge, or load, and annual expenses totaling a staggering 19.7%, according to Morningstar.

James Fay has run the Pewaukee, Wis.-based fund since its April 1992 inception. Since then the fund has built an asset base of just $1 million. That's probably because it didn't finish a single calendar year in the black until last year, when it posted a 48.9% return. It lost nearly 40% in 1997 -- more than 27% in that year's fourth quarter alone. ...