Thumbs Up: Positive Faring of Funds

Despite investigations into latetrading and market timing, mutualfunds turned in a banner year fortheir investors in 2003. According tofund tracker Lipper Inc, the averagediversified domestic stock fund wasup 32% last year, and diversifiedinternational funds fared even better,up an average 35%. Taxable bondfunds gained an average 7.7%, whilemunicipal bond funds were up 4.8%.Small cap growth funds led the domesticfund parade, with an impressive44.36% average gain. Stock funds alsonotched 11 months of net inflows duringthe year, including 10 consecutivemonths starting in March, despitewholesale bailouts by investors infunds caught up in the trading scandals.Shareholders siphoned off $11.1billion in assets from Putnam Investmentsin December, while Janus CapitalGroup's assets dropped by morethan $2.3 billion.