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3 Longtime Mutual Fund Managers Earning Their Tenure

In contrast to the long-term investment nature of mutual funds, managers tend to come and go fairly quickly. The average tenure? Only around four or five years.

So, having a money manager that sticks around awhile can have its advantages. A tenured top gun tends to have more experience and thus has survived more twists and turns of the economic roller coaster, as opposed to getting past just a couple hills before pounding his chest for coming out ahead.

Of course, you also dont want to put your chips behind a mutual fund manager that enjoyed his heyday decades ago and still hangs his hat on that. If youre not doing anything for me lately, youre not doing anything at all.

With that in mind, were taking a look at three mutual fund managers who have hit a sweet middle ground. Not only have they been in the saddle for quite some time, but theyve also been able to outperform the market for the past few years:

William Danoff, Fidelity Contrafund

The longest-tenured manager on this list can be found running the Fidelity Contrafund (MUTF:FCNTX ). William Danoff is his name, and he has had a pretty successful run since taking the reins in 1990.

Danoff graduated from Harvard in the early 80s and got his MBA at UPenn’s Wharton School. He joined Fidelity in 1986 and took over the Contrafund after four years as a securities analyst and portfolio manager at the company.

The three most recent managers before Danoff only ran the fund for between one and three years. When Danoff stepped in, though, the now-45-year-old fund saw some stability in leadership once again. And this leader hasn’t been slacking.

Since 2009, FCNTX has seen returns of almost 17%, edging out the S&P 500 (16%) and also beating the large-growth benchmark (15%). In the past year, the fund again beat the market by almost 1 percentage point, while it blew away the benchmark by more than 5. For the past 10 years, Contrafunds returns were the best out of the nation’s 10 largest mutual funds and it had less volatility than all but one of those funds.

Contrafunds investments are spread across a wide range of industries, as can be seen in holdings like Wells Fargo  (NYSE:WFC ), Walt Disney  (NYSE:DIS ), McDonalds  (NYSE:MCD ) and Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR ).

The focus, no matter the sector, is on fast-growing, strong companies companies Danoff picks after meeting with executives and doing extensive research. That extensive research and market-beating performance comes at a decent 0.88% expense ratio.

Donald Yacktman, Yacktman Service Fund

Next up is Donald Yacktman, who runs his namesake Yacktman Services Fund (MUTF:YACKX ). Twenty years ago, Yacktman who earned his MBA from Harvard founded the Yacktman Asset Team. With that, the Yacktman Services Fund was born, and he has been running it ever since. (Although family member Stephen Yacktman also was pulled on board to help a decade later.)

The year before he founded his firm, Yacktman was named Portfolio Manager of The Year by Morningstar. And after creating his own firm and fund, he has been just as successful despite a rough spell of subpar performance during which he was almost ousted from the top spot.