Morningstar on the Wintergreen Fund

27Oct05

Most mutual fund launches do not merit much press attention. The new Wintergreen Fund attracted attention earlier this week in a piece that focused on the ability of star managers to go out on their own, successfully. Now, Terence Geenty at Morningstar.com weighs in on the advantages and disadvantages of the new Wintergreen Fund. Geenty is in fact surprised that Winters chose to launch a mutual fund when there clearly would have been an opportunity to launch a hedge fund.

The new Wintergreen Fund, like Winters’ earlier fund, will have a great deal of flexibility to allow him to practice his unique form of value investing. However Geenty believes that Winters is asking too much for that privilege with an expense ratio expected to be near 1.95%. Another concern is the lack of additional analytical support for Winters. Despite having faith in Winters’ abilities, Geenty believes it is too early to commit to the Wintergreen Fund in part because there are better options for fund investors already out there.