--- title: Is Your Mutual Fund Award-Worthy? description: So much for letting a little matter such as the largest erosion of investor equity in more than 70 years get in the way of… authors: - name: timestaff url: https://money.com/author/timestaff/ articles: 459 covers: - Investing - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z' modified: '2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z' section: Investing word_count: 353 canonical: https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Is Your Mutual Fund Award-Worthy?](https://money.com/img/logo-social.png) So much for letting a little matter such as the largest erosion of investor equity in more than 70 years get in the way of some fund-industry back-slapping. Last week the 2009 Lipper Fund Awards were doled out, recognizing more than 200 “funds that have excelled in delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance, relative to peers.” Maybe I am a tad overly sensitive given the serious depletion of my retirement savings, but isn’t cheering on mutual funds just because they managed to suck less than their peers a bit much? Do we really need to high-five Pyrrhic victors right now? For example, what exactly is award-worthy about the fact that the Dreyfus S&P STARS Opportunities fund has a five-year annualized return of -4.5%? I don’t care if that was a heck of a lot better than its peers; a loss is a loss and doesn’t seem worth celebrating, yet it was anointed the winner among mid cap growth funds for the past five years. You can check out other “winners” [here](http://awards.lipperweb.com/?refer=lipperwe). It’s not lost on me that a fund that held on better than its peers in a down market will require less digging out when the market rebounds. And I fully get that weathering down markets is a necessary part of a long-term investing strategy. But awards? Come on. Yet Lipper seems a bit oblivious to the carnage done to 401(k) balances. “Welcome to the Virtuosos” is the greeting on the awards home page (the link above) accompanied by a ridiculously bullish fever-line market graph that looks like the S&P 500 circa 1999, not 2009. Not having attended the ceremony I am unaware if rose-tinted glasses were handed out as party favors. But here’s the absolute cherry on the top of this sundae: Lipper is hawking trophies to the award winners at the bargain basement price of $165 for a large trophy, $119 for medium and $95 for small. Let’s just hope no fund orders up a bunch and sends the bill to its shareholders. And let us know if you in fact think any funds you own are award-worthy. \-- Carla Fried ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Mutual Funds", "item": "https://money.com/mutual-funds/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Is Your Mutual Fund Award-Worthy?" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/", "name": "Is Your Mutual Fund Award-Worthy?", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Is Your Mutual Fund Award-Worthy?", "articleSection": "Investing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://money.com/img/logo-social.png", "width": 300, "height": 300 } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "timestaff", "url": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/#author" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z", "description": "So much for letting a little matter such as the largest erosion of investor equity in more than 70 years get in the way of…", "abstract": "So much for letting a little matter such as the largest erosion of investor equity in more than 70 years get in the way of…", "@id": "https://money.com/is-your-mutual-fund-award-worthy/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2009-04-08T17:30:21.000Z", "wordCount": 353, "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Investment", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Mutual fund", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_fund" ] } ] } ] } ```