Fund that hasn’t picked a stock in 80 years beats 98pc of peers

Equity investors pursuing a buy-and-hold strategy might want to check out a fund that hasn’t made an original stock market bet in 80 years.

The Voya Corporate Leaders Trust Fund, now run by a unit of Voya Financial, bought equal amounts of stock in 30 major US corporations in 1935 and hasn’t picked a new stock since.

Some of its holdings are unchanged, including DuPont, General Electric, Procter & Gamble and Union Pacific. Others were spun off from or acquired from original components, including Berkshire Hathaway (successor to the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway); CBS (acquired by Westinghouse Electric and renamed); and Honeywell (which bought Allied Chemical and Dye). Some are just gone, including the Pennsylvania Railroad and American Can. Twenty-one stocks remain in the fund.

The plan is simple, and the results have been good. Light on banks and heavy on industrials and energy, the fund has beaten 98 per cent of its peers, known as large value funds, over both the past five and 10 years, according to Morningstar.

“This fund has been around a lot longer than I have, and it’s working,” said Craig Watkins, 29, an investment analyst for Conover Capital Management in Bellevue, Washington. Conover has recommended the Voya fund to superannuation plans it advises.

Watkins compared the Voya fund’s “deep-value” approach to investor Warren Buffett’s, whose Berkshire Hathaway is the fund’s second-largest holding.

“It’s deep-value in the sense that all the companies in the portfolio have an amazing tenure,” Watkins said. He said the Voya fund’s strategy can be better than an index fund because it doesn’t have to change its weightings when the index changes

The winning performance has drawn record inflows: Since 2011, the fund has taken in about US$708 million from investors, its best four years ever, according to Lipper.