Manu Daftary, the manager of Quaker Strategic Growth Fund, has quite a different approach to investing than most growth managers. Instead of chasing the next huge growth winner, he focuses on avoiding the losers. He believes that managers should have as broad a mandate as possible to be able to pursue all opportunities, even if they are found in unusual places.

Unlike other funds, the Global Emerging Markets Fund has a flat structure, where managers are deeply involved in investing activities and less in administrative issues. The fund capitalizes on the pricing inefficiencies and lack of coverage of the emerging markets by thorough fundamental research and regular company visits. An emphasis on risk management is another key characteristic of the fund.

Growth investors have learned their lessons in the past years, according to Alex Motola, manager of Thornburg Core Growth Fund. He doesn’t try to time the market or predict which type of stocks will be hot in the future. Instead, he runs a portfolio that is diversified across the growth spectrum and focuses on the fund's core competence – picking stocks based on in-depth fundamental research.

Starting as a research firm 40 years ago, Wright Investors’ Service considers research and analysis to be the cornerstones of its investment process. The fund has its own definition of what a blue chip company is. To qualify for that label and to make it to Wright Approved Investment List, a company has to meet 32 standards of investment quality.

Abond fund that doesn't particularly emphasize yield may surprise you, but this approach fits well into the philosophy of the Oppenheimer Core Bond Fund. High yields are associated with high risk, and that is something the Fund’s managers try to avoid. Different from its peers, the fund focuses on what investors expect from a core bond allocation – consistent, competitive risk-adjusted returns.

The liberalization in the mutual fund industry has allowed the Arbitrage Fund to take advantage of some of the investment techniques that were previously reserved for hedge funds only. John Orrico, who has run the portfolio since 2000, seeks capital appreciation and preservation of capital by applying well-defined research and risk controls in the risk-savvy world of mergers and acquisitions.

Barnaby Wiener, the manager of MFS International Value Fund, combines a conservative approach to managing investors’ money with bravery when he has enough confidence in a story. He doesn't like grand projections on the direction of the world and stays focused within his expertise – bottom-up stock selection, which involves careful evaluation of both the upside and the downside potential.

Starting with the belief that the market's focus changes over time, Navellier Midcap Growth Fund has designed a dynamic model, testing a hundred criteria every quarter, to follow these changes. Despite being driven by fundamentals, this is a strict quantitative approach that eliminates all human bias from the stock-selection process.

Not constrained by geographic regions or company sizes, the managers of U.S. Global Investors Global Resources Fund (PSPFX) are only limited by their sector. Fortunately, they are able to prove that commodities are in a bull period that is here to stay for longer than usual. The industrialization of India and China, and the lagging commodities supply create the perfect opportunities for the fund.