Many investors use a wide variety of strategies to try to help them get insight from the best minds on Wall Street, but often they overlook a fairly simple way of following some of the brightest minds out there. Look for the top mutual fund performers, through a venue such as Yahoo’s Mutual Fund Search and try starting out your search there.

For example, if you are looking for large cap growth stocks go to the large cap growth section of top performers and look at the top performers for different time periods. If you are a long-term investor it is usually best to take the closest look at mutual funds that have done very well over the 3 and 5 year period rather than something as short as a 3 month period. After arriving at the list click on the desired mutual fund and then look at their top 10 holdings. Yahoo shows you these as a % of the overall mutual fund portfolio, which is helpful because it helps you know just how much of a stake the mutual fund has in that particular stock. Look at some of the top mutual fund holdings and write them down or keep them in a word document and do further research on these names yourself.

By using this kind of a method what you are doing is you are getting a great starting point and free advice from some of the best pros out there. There aren’t many other ways on Wall Street that you can get advice from the best without paying a huge amount. Keep in mind that these holdings aren’t released immediately so this is definitely a method for long-term investors and not traders to use.

Start incorporating the research from top mutual fund managers into your investment decisions and get yourself ahead of the game.

As an investor you should know that not all mutual fund families are created equal. Some mutual fund families are much more prone to loading their funds with extremely high fees and expenses, while others do their best to keep the fees and expenses low. The average performance of the mutual fund is also very important, so having taken these things all into account let’s take a look at the best mutual fund families.

Top Four Mutual Fund Families

1. Vanguard- Vanguard belongs in the top spot because of the way they have pioneered the mutual fund industry. They have set the bar for low cost mutual funds and have forced other mutual fund companies to lower their expenses to compete with them. A wide variety in funds available and some impressive returns certainly don’t hurt their cause either.
2. T Rowe Price- T Rowe Price has done a great job of bringing new and unique funds to the market such as retirement mutual funds that have specific target dates. The Maryland-based company has also done a good job of keeping their expenses lower than most. They have top performing mutual funds in many different categories annually.
3. PIMCO- Hands down PIMCO is the best of the bunch when it comes to offerings for bond related mutual funds. Bill Gross of PIMCO has a reputation as the leader in this industry. The company has consistently performed better than its rivals and its costs are fairly reasonable.
4. Bridgeway- This mutual fund company specializes in small cap mutual funds, and doesn’t handle as much money as the rest of the families on this list. It is tough to deny Bridgeway a spot after looking at the returns from some of their best mutual funds over the last several years. The Bridgeway funds also have a name for being very socially responsible. In fact, Bridgeway donates 50% of its investment advisory fee profits to charity!

While there are certainly top mutual funds from other mutual fund families, these four families are a great place to start your search for a highly ranked low cost mutual fund.