In the November issue of Investment Advisor, I wrote about a process I've developed over the past five years to select and monitor mutual funds and ETFs. It's called the Fiduciary Scorecard and like any tool of this sort, the proof is in the pudding. Therefore, I thought I'd look at a few of the funds I selected in January 2012 and examine how they performed for the entire year. I should clarify a few things before we proceed. First, the scorecard measures a fund in relation to its specific peer group. Hence, it's possible that a fund may have performed poorly, but relative to its peers, received a high score. Therefore, category selection becomes an important step.
Overall, I'm pleased with the results. In fact, 70% of all funds finished in the top half of their category. I'll divide the performance according to Morningstar's percentile rank where 1 is the best and 100 is the worst. We'll concentrate on the funds that finished in the top half of their peer group.
Percentile 1-10
| Fund | TICKER | Category | Percentile Rank |
| SIT US Government Securities | Short Government | 4th | |
| PIMCO All Asset All Authority | World Allocation | 5th | |
| Metropolitan West Total Return Fund | Intermediate Term Bond | 6th | |
| Marketfield | Long-Short | 6th |
Percentile 11-20
| Fund | TICKER | Category | Percentile Rank |
| PIMCO All Asset | World Allocation | 11th | |
| PIMCO Total Return | Intermediate-Term Bond | 12th | |
| PIMCO Short Term Bond | Ultra Short Bond | 12th | |
| Merger | Market Neutral | 19th |
Percentile 21-30
| Fund | TICKER | Category | Percentile Rank |
| Fidelity Advisor Emerging Markets | Emerging Market Bond | 21st | |
| Metropolitan West Intermediate Bond | Intermediate-Term Bond | 21st | |
| Nuveen Real Estate | Real Estate | 22nd | |
| PIMCO Global Bond (USD Hedged) | World Bond | 24th | |
| Vanguard's Inflation Protected Securities | Inflation-Protected Bond | 28th |
Percentile 31-40
