Orange County-based mutual funds reported a reasonably good 2021.
Twenty-eight of the 33 funds tracked by the Business Journal reported gains last year, including 15 that topped 10%, according to a Business Journal analysis based on Morningstar data.
Investment giant Pimco, separately, had a good year as well. The Newport Beach firm, with $2.2 trillion in assets under management, reported 64 of its 92 funds had positive gains, including a 54% return by its RealEstateRealReturn Strategy Fund; see last week’s print edition of the Business Journal for more.
Outside of Pimco, the best performer was Pacific Life Insurance Co.’s Pacific Funds Small-Cap Value A (PFEAX), which posted a 34% return, topping its benchmark by 609 basis points.
“It could be an early indication that value [investing] is coming back,” said Carleton Muench, who as vice president of investment oversight and a portfolio manager at Newport Beach-based Pacific Life oversees some $55 billion in assets.
The small-cap value index advanced 28% in 2021 versus 2.8% for small-cap growth. The disparity in results was the second-largest calendar year spread between the style indexes since their 1979 inception.
Pacific’s value fund, which is managed by subadvisor Rothschild & Co. Asset Management, benefitted from several stock selections, such as a rebound in industrial companies like Magnolia Oil and Gas, Atkore Inc. and Herc Holdings, Muench said. It was underweight on healthcare investments while overweight on consumer discretionary investments, which benefited from airline travel picking up last year, he added.
In fact, six of Pacific Life’s 13 funds tracked by the Business Journal reported topping 10% growth.
$45.8B AUM
Collectively, the 33 funds manage $45.8 billion in assets. The largest fund is Laguna Beach’s WCM Focused International Growth Institutional (WCMIX), which has $28.9 billion in assets; see the Jan. 17 print edition of the Business Journal for more on WCM.
Seven of the funds have more than $1 billion in assets while 14 have assets from $100 million to $1 billion and the remaining 11 have less than $100 million in assets.
Although only one of the funds beat the S&P; 500’s 27% return last year, 16 funds did top their benchmarks, according to Morningstar.
The Al Frank Fund Class (VALUX) was another OC fund that took advantage of its value orientation to rank No. 3 on the Business Journal’s list with a 25% return.
The fund is managed by AFAM Capital, an Aliso Viejo wealth manager that was purchased in 2018 by Kovitz Investment Group.
“We had sizable gains in information technology sector,” said portfolio manager John Buckingham, who oversees $900 million in assets under management.
“We’re very disciplined and consistent. We’ve always been a value oriented fund.”
Buckingham is editor of the Prudent Speculator, which Barron’s once proclaimed as “The Little Newsletter that Crushed the Market” during its 40-year history of predictions.
Schiff’s Gold
The worst performing fund was EuroPac Gold A (EPGFX), which fell 18% and now has $212 million AUM. A big reason was a 3.5% drop in gold prices, its worst performance since 2015.
The fund belongs to the Peter Schiff-founded Euro Pacific Capital Inc. in Newport Beach.
In a prior interview with the Business Journal, Schiff, who hosts his own radio show, said his funds are for investors who want to hedge the risk of a U.S. collapse and it does poorly when the dollar rises.
In 2016, his EuroPac International Value Fund (EPIVX) did something unusual in the investment world: It rocketed to No.1 on a Morningstar ranking from 100th place in 2015. Last year was just as tumultuous: the fund, fell from the No. 2 in 2020 to the No. 91 percentile rank in 2021, even though it returned 7.1% last year.
