Less Is More

No matter what's happening in the market, opportunities always abound, according to Ron Sachs, portfolio manager of the Janus Orion fund (JORNX). Sachs, who has been at the helm of this fund since its inception in 2000, doesn't focus on the hot sectors, which could lead to a portfolio that's overexposed in one area. Instead, he selects companies for the fund's portfolio one by one. The strategy has paid off. At the end of 2005, the Janus Orion fund was up 20.9 percent--more than double the performance of the average multi-cap growth fund in Lipper's universe. The fund's total return for the past three years is 25.96 percent.

The Orion fund is a concentrated fund and keeps between 20 and 40 stocks in its portfolio. While some would argue that this makes it a riskier investment than, say, a mutual fund portfolio that holds 100 or 200 stocks, Sachs states, "Modern portfolio theory says that 20 to 30 diversified stocks is a fully diversified portfolio."

Sachs considers everything on a risk-reward basis. "For every stock, [the question is], What is the opportunity vs. the risk, and the probability of each?" he says.

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This fund's assets may be invested in any size company anywhere in the world. As of late 2005, 20 percent of its assets were invested overseas.