Archive for July 16, 2010

The Mutual Fund Series: Janus Funds

This is a continuation of The Mutual Fund Series here on JosephSangl.com.

During each part of this weekly series, we will be looking at a specific mutual fund company.

Today’s company is Janus.

Janus

Janus Capital Management is a subsidiary of Janus Capital Group, Inc. that is based in Denver, Colorado and it was founded in 1969 by Thomas Bailey. Janus Capital Group, Inc. is comprised of Janus Capital Management LLC, INTECH Investment Management LLC, and Perkin Investment Management LLC. All three of these subsidiaries currently manage $165.5 billion. Janus Capital Management handles balanced, alternative, fixed-income, and money market funds.

What I Like About Janus Funds

  • Intensive Research – Janus is a devoted to thorough research of each stock they invest in. Millions of dollars are spent each year for research purposes.
  • Employee Investments – Janus requires every mutual fund employee to invest in the funds they represent in order to ensure that the interest of the employees is always in alignment with the interest of the clients.
  • Award-Winning Funds – Janus has been recently honored by Lipper with awards for delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted relative performance and the company has won multiple awards for individual funds. Around 95% of Janus’ funds are no-load.
  • Rejecting Buyouts – Janus Capital Group rejected buyout offers from MassMutual and FranklinTempleton, which is extremely important for their hometown Denver, CO. Even though Janus is a smaller fund company compared T. Rowe Price, FranklinTempleton, and Oppenheimer, the company has seen growing fund performance rates in the past few months, giving Janus hope of staying independent.

Something To Consider

  • Reputation – Unfortunately, Janus was involved in the mutual fund scandal in 2003 by allowing favored clients to participate in illegal market timing trading. Janus eventually agreed to a $226 million settlement with federal and state regulators in 2004. Even though Janus seems to be showing great fund performance now, investors should always be cautious.

Janus Mutual Funds I Own

I do not currently own any Janus mutual funds.

Janus Mutual Fund To Look At

Janus Advisor Large Cap Growth [Ticker: JDGAX]- The objective of this fund is long-term growth of capital by investing in common stocks with growth potential. This fund’s inception date was February 5, 1970. It has an annual expense ratio of 1.04%, an average annual return of 12.06%, and a minimum investment of $2,500. Morningstar gave this fund a 3-star rating.

Read about other mutual fund companies

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NOTE:   Clemson student Anna Briscoe, a senior majoring in Economics with a minor in Financial Management has been so gracious to research and write the majority of this post.