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Our favorites include something for every investor, from the best domestic and international funds to the best green stocks and online broker. Plus, discover a great fund with a low minimum investment and the best stock to buy and hold for the long term.
We've laid out our picks in text format below, or you can check them out in our slide show.
BEST DOMESTIC STOCK FUND OPEN TO NEW INVESTORS
FAIRHOLM
It's hard to go wrong with this concentrated fund (it held 24 stocks at last report). The value-investing discipline of managers Bruce Berkowitz, Larry Pitkowsky and Keith Trauner keeps Fairholme (symbol FAIRX) out of trouble in bear markets and lets investors participate in the upside of bull markets.
Net result: The fund has returned an annualized 18% since its launch in December 1999, trouncing Standard & Poor's 500-stock index by an average of 16 percentage points a year (all long-term performance data are to October 1).
BEST STOCK TO PUT AWAY AND FORGET
MEDTRONIC
The Minneapolis-based maker of medical devices (MDT) offers investors a solid combination of growth and income. Its broad portfolio of products, such as heart pacemakers and artificial spinal disks, will continue to meet the demands of an aging population.
Meanwhile, Medtronic's business generates a flood of cash, which it uses for shareholder-friendly dividend payments and share repurchases. The payout has risen each year since 1978.
BEST NATURAL-RESOURCES FUND
T. ROWE PRICE NEW ERA
Longtime manager Charles Ober takes an eclectic approach to picking stocks. Rather than invest solely in commodity producers, such as oil companies, he diversifies the fund with businesses that supply and service those producers. Such bets mean that New Era rarely dwells with the dogs during a downturn in this volatile sector.
The 0.66% expense ratio, well below average for this category, is another plus. The $5.8-billion fund (PRNEX) gained an annualized 14% over the past decade.
BEST FOREIGN STOCK FUND
DODGE & COX INTERNATIONAL
The fund epitomizes the all-around excellence we've come to expect from this San Francisco-based money manager: meticulous research in identifying undervalued stocks, modest management fees, low portfolio turnover and strong securities selection.
International (DODFX) has returned an annualized 30% over the past five years, an average of six percentage points better than its overseas benchmark.
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