The Paradigm Value Fund takes advantage of inefficiencies in the small-cap market to develop a deeper understanding of target companies and, as a result, gain advantage in the marketplace. Seeking capital appreciation, portfolio manager John Walthausen is looking for stocks with strong fundamentals and long-term potential.

The fact that expectations are usually priced in a stock is a simple truth that most investors tend to neglect. That helps Warren Koontz, the manager of the Loomis Sayles Value Fund, to find undiscovered value in areas not typical for value managers. With a portfolio that’s constructed on the basis of individual ideas, and a time horizon of two to three years, the fund benefits from the volatility created by the short-term mentality of the market.

Investing isn’t a mechanical or scientific process driven by strict rules, according to Marc Heilweil, the manager of Marathon Value Portfolio. It is the experience, the judgments based on that experience, the research and the intuition that drive his process. Constructed with the idea to be an all-weather fund that is not too dependent on economic or market conditions, the fund provides diversified exposure to equities with a long-term perspective.

With a global mandate for seeking small-cap growth opportunities and with global resources to draw upon, the Allianz RCM Global Small-Cap Fund feels free to invest anywhere in the world. Ideally, the fund would invest in growth companies in a growing industry. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, portfolio manager Tom Ross most often looks for the companies with consistent growth that outperform peers in their competitive environment.

Oddly enough, investors repeat mistakes again and again. Through financial models, a quantitative approach makes behavior patterns of investors evident to these models whether it is in a sector or in a stock. James Johnson exploits arbitrage opportunities through disciplined, quantitative fund management.

Everyone is so focused on earnings that we seem to forget that only strong companies with positive future outlook and growing earnings can afford to raise dividends consistently for a 10-year period. That simple but golden idea, combined with a focus on food, energy, healthcare, and finance, enables the Rising Dividend Growth Fund to defy the cyclical nature of the market and to deliver growing income to its investors.

Most people would expect small-cap growth funds to be always looking for the next big thing and to invest in hundreds of stocks to find the next Google. This one is different. Managed with an institutional approach, the fund focuses on the high-quality businesses and invests for the long term. Always aware of the risks, the fund has fewer names than its peers as it poseses a higher level of confidence in each name.

Investing for the BB&T Small Cap Fund is similar to going to the mall – people look for high quality products and prefer to pay less. With his focus on valuation, portfolio manager John Kvantas is willing to wait for companies with a quality business to go on sale. It is one of the Fund’s core beliefs that the strong and conservative balance sheet gives these undervalued companies the capability to ride out difficulties on the operational side.

Manning & Napier Advisors has full confidence in its strategies as the firm has applied them for over 30 years across all investment products. Its small-cap fund relies on three separate frameworks to select stocks that can provide growth, deep value, or cyclical value. According to one of its managers, Jeff Tyburski, the key is the bottom-up approach, the consistency, and the risk control embedded in every step of the process, even in the analysts’ incentives.

Stock movements are driven by many fundamental factors but by only one technical reason – because investors are buying or selling them. Ralph Parks, the manager of the Ralph Parks Cyclical Equity Fund (RPCEX), has developed a digital model for discerning the trading patterns and benefiting from the cyclicality of the market. His goal – You have limited money & time – attempt to be in the strongest investment patterns you can find.