Virtus Strategic Growth A (PSTAX) keeps at least 65% of its assets in large cap stocks with market capitalizations within the range of the Russell 1000 Growth Index. The fund returned 20.92% in the last one year period. As of February 2011, this growth mutual fund held 78 issues and its return in the last year has been 23.76%. The top 10 holdings account for 19.56% of the total assets in this fund. Zacks has it ranked the highest, yet Morningstar gives it the lowest ranking of only 1-star.
Invesco Van Kampen Mid Cap Growth A (VGRAX) is a growth fund tied to mid-cap equities and this fund has a ten year annualized return of 7.56%. Its expense ratio is 1.24% versus what is a category average of 1.41% (or 1.31% noted above). Its top 10 holdings account for 18.05% of the total assets in the fund and it has returned 20.14% over the last year. This fund is ranked with 3-stars by rival Morningstar.
When you screen the holdings of these companies, some of the common stocks that keep recurring in each are Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM), Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), Wynn Resorts Ltd. (NASDAQ: WYNN), and Amazon.com inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).
For every type of open-end mutual fund strategy, there is almost always a corresponding ETF. Two corresponding ETFs in growth stocks are the iShares Russell 1000 Growth Index (NYSE: IWF) and the iShares S&P 500 Growth Index (NYSE: IVW).
Here you can get all of the Zacks #1 ranked mutual funds. It is sometimes a bit odd when you see a ranking system that is so different from rivals. On the flip-side, analysts in stocks often have opposite calls from firm to firm. Most analysts rank Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)
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JON C. OGG
