A focused model driven fund portfolio can be quite a risky proposition. However, Mark Hillman, portfolio manager of Hillman Focused Advantage Fund, surmounts such risk by investing in companies that are market leaders, possessing a sustainable competitive advantage in their industries, but which are currently trading at a discount to their intrinsic value and believes that in the long run, they will outperform their competitors.

Small-cap stocks offer great opportunities for capital appreciation, but tend to be vulnerable to competitive challenges and bad economic news. Viking Small-Cap Value fund employs a strategy designed to give downside protection in the search of long-term total return and capital preservation. For Gregory Greene, portfolio manager, buying high-quality companies trading at a discount to the market leads to a better performance over the long term with less risk.

Most research shows that it is very difficult to beat the market, but Meridian Value Fund has discovered one area that over time has done that. That is investing in temporarily broken growth companies because the market tends to discount those at an extreme level. Fund managers Rick Aster and James England tr y to capitalize on that opportunity using a value investing strategy with a focus on the long-term earnings growth potential of companies.

Identifying the right stocks in a vast global universe of over 2,500 stocks is both cumbersome and difficult. Shigeki Makino and Brad Greenleaf, portfolio managers for Putnam Global Equity Fund, and their global team of experts carry out this task by utilizing a process that blends quantitative and fundamental analysis, which they believe will deliver consistent returns and outperform their global benchmark.

Joshua Shaskan, one of three Portfolio Managers of the Transamerica Premier Focus Fund, believes that a concentrated fund may be less risky than a diversified one because of the attention and the thorough research each stock in the portfolio receives. With a long-term focus on highquality growth, the fund invests in 25 to 40 companies that it expects to be future winners. A team approach and a focus on catalysts are among the key aspects of the fund’s management.

A quantitative process, if well-constructed and disciplined, may eliminate the bias, the emotions, and the behavioral pitfalls from the investment decisions. That’s why the Johnson Disciplined Mid-Cap Fund, formerly known as the Johnson Opportunity Fund, changed its approach in 2003. Today the fund relies on a multi-factor quantitative model and focuses on stock selection because that’s where the alpha is added.

Finding dividend-paying companies with the added ability to create equity value is an uphill task. RS Equity Dividend Fund manager Ray Anello and his team of eight sector-specific fundamental analysts and two quantitative analysts employ a well-disciplined investment strategy to identify those individual companies that not only can maintain their current dividends, but grow them over time.

As a globally diversified core equity fund invested in companies of all sizes and market segments, Empiric Core Equity Fund is trying to rotate its multiple structured investment strategies in order to stay consistent with the current market. Portfolio manager Mark Allen Coffelt evaluates securities in the fund every day, comparing each to the opportunities currently available in the global market.