HTF Top 10 Fund Picks for 2020

​​After careful consideration and research I have landed on my HTF Top 10 Fund Picks for 2020.  There were so many funds that meet my criteria to qualify to be on this list.  The criteria is to ensure a higher degree of confidence that these investments can sustain in a long term view.  I am NOT a believer that active investors or managers have a consistent track record of beating the market and/or the performance of passively managed mutual funds/ETFs.  Just to be clear, I am talking about returns AFTER fund fees and potential tax implications from short and long term gains.  With all that said, my criteria for the HTF Top 10 Funds are as follows:

• Minimum Investment - Between $0-$3,000
• Load - Preferably no load, but have one exception in my list.
• Expense Ratio - Less than 1%
• Turnover - Less than 50%
• Average Manager Tenure - Greater than 10 years.  I do have two exceptions that I will discuss further with each fund breakdown below.
• Fund Returns - Greater than 7% since fund inception.
• Fund Inception - Only includes funds that have been in existence for 15 years or more.  This is to ensure that these funds have a track record of going through at least ONE recession.  

Based on this criteria here is my HTF Top 10 Picks for 2020:

As you can see based on the fund categories there is a heavy focus on funds that invest in larger stable companies that not only provide growth opportunities but also regular income streams through quarterly and annual distributions.  Further, I am including 3 healthcare funds as I strongly believe these funds will continue to outperform over the next 10-15 years with baby boomers being in the 65-85 year old age.  In addition, with the current pandemic I believe there is going to be considerable investment in biotech research and disease prevention.  

To give more detail outlines for these funds based on the criteria see the following:

Non-Return Criteria

​Note: These figures above were pulled as of April 2020.  As such, adjustments may have occurred over the past two months.

Load for AMRMX - This is the only fund in the Top 10 that has a load %.  Even with the one-time 5.75% fee on initial investment, this fund is phenomenal.  Fund has been around for 70 years and has an annualized return since inception of over 11%!  In addition, ongoing annual expenses are very manageable at 0.61%.  

Tenure Requirement for HOVLX - Prabha S. Carpenter is the longest serving current manager at 6.1 years.  Prior to Carpenter’s arrival as Portfolio Manager the fund had three managers that served for 10+ years.  Carpenter has maintained the performance of this fund since assuming the role in 2014 with a top quartile ranking among large value funds for 0 to 5 year annualized returns.    

Returns