Skippers Make Over Putnam Voyager Fund

The $10 billion Putnam Voyager Fund, Putnam Investments' second-largest fund, has certainly seen better days. The fund has lost 75% of its assets since 1999 and has delivered a meager average annual return of 40 basis points in the past five years, compared to an annual return of 5.5% of its growth fund peers in that period, Bloomberg reports.  In 2002 alone, it plummeted 27%.

Kelly Morgan and Robert Ginsberg, who took over as managers in March 2005, have been assiduously trying to turn the ship around, particularly by diversifying the fund's holdings and looking for value stocks whose share prices are cheap compared to their ability to generate cash and above-average profits. That appears to be working, becuase in the trailing past 12 months the fund is up 13%.

They've also increased the fund's exposure to financial services stocks from 11% to 14%, adding shares of Commerce Bancorp, Countrywide Financial and American Express. In addition, they've bought up more shares of Cisco Systems, Dell, eBay and Apple Computer.

"These companies are being run better than they ever have," Morgan commented.

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