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John Neff's dual embarrassment
(MONEY Magazine) – Quest for Value's George Long may be hot, but he's hardly the most famous manager of a dual-purpose fund. (Such funds have two classes of shares. One takes all the portfolio's capital gains, while the other gets the income.) That distinction belongs to John Neff, 61, steward of both the renowned -- and open-ended -- $9.4 billion Vanguard Windsor Fund and a little-known closed- end, $325 million Gemini II dual-purpose fund, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Indeed, Neff often advises would-be shareholders in Windsor, closed to new investors since 1989, to buy Gemini's capital shares instead. They would have been much better served by Long, who like Neff is a diehard value investor. Last year the capital shares of Quest for Value returned a whopping 45%, more than double Gemini's comparable 19% gain. And QFV widened its lead over the past five years, compounding at 35% annually vs. Gemini's 12%. |
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