Best in the US: the top 20 portfolio managers in America (2024)

Portfolio managers in America are hardly short of competition. There are around 5,000 of them, 3,700 of whom boast three year track records. To be named as one of the 20 best in the country, let alone take top spot, is no mean feat.

In the tablebelow werun down the top 20 portfolio managers over the last three years on a risk-adjusted basis for the amount of value they added above their benchmarks for every unit of risk taken.

Occupying the top two spots are Matthew Dalton and Brian Steeves, managers of the Transamerica Intermediate Muni fund.

The pair, who sub-advise from Belle Haven Investments, has smashed the intermediate benchmark over three years till the end of February returning 18%, compared with a 10% gain in the index.

The portfolio is heavily overweight Illinois with 18% of the $650 million fund invested there. This is a position which comes at the expense of the two largest issuing states with both California and New York having fairly small allocations of 10% and 6% respectively.

Municipal bonds have been one of the few bright spots for active managers in what has been a savage start to the year. There were $7 billion of net inflows into actively managed mutual funds in the sector during January and February which is in stark contrast to the $37 billion of net outflows endured by active funds as a whole over the same time period.

Apple not core

Rahul Narang, manager of the $484.9 million Columbia Global Technology Growth fund, takes third place on our list after returning 60% to investors over the past three years.

While some of his peers may have delivered more during that time, Narang has exposed his investors to a lower level of risk, a factor which puts him top of the tech deck in this analysis.

One of his shrewdest calls has been to reduce his exposure to Apple throughout 2015. The consumer electronics behemoth is at something of an impasse with declining sales growth in its key product lines and only occupies 2.8% of the portfolio; down from 6.4% at the end of January 2015 and far less than then the benchmark’s 12.7%. This is balanced with an overweight position in Google parent Alphabet (6.9%) and videogame manufacturer Activision Blizzard (2.5%) among others.

In terms of broad US equities only small cap managers have been able to add the significant value needed to be included on this list. Robert Rifkin, manager of the $823.6 million Wells Fargo Special Small Cap Value fund, comes in sixth, while Paul Kleinaitis andHitesh Patel take joint fourteenth place based on the performance of three PNC Funds small cap strategies which they manage.

Emerging talent

Elsewhere in the top 20 there are impressive showings from emerging market managers Gary Greenberg of Calvert Investments and Andrew Foster of Seafarer Capital Partners, who ranked fourth and nineteenth respectively.

Both deserve particular praise, not only for outperforming in what has been a brutal time for the asset class, but also minimising losses to just 3% and 6% respectively over a period in which the MSCI Emerging Markets index has fallen 24%.

Given this price drop many investors might begin to consider emerging markets as a value play. If doing so, it is vital to understand where managers are placing cash.

Calvert, in his $85.5 million Calvert Emerging Markets Equity fund, has a sizable chunk devoted to greater China. Taiwan occupies 18%, while mainland China accounts for a further 9%. When combined with an off benchmark 14% in Hong Kong this makes for a sizable allocation to the beleaguered market.

Conversely Foster is currently running a significant underweight to China, and indeed the whole Asian region, favoring instead an extremely bold position in Brazil of 18% and a further 7% in Mexico.