Putnam Investors APINVX

Morningstar Rating

Fund Research and Analysis

by Jonathan Rahbar

We need to see more consistency from Putnam Investors before giving the go-ahead.

It has been a little over a year since manager Jerry Sullivan took the helm at this offering, which struggled to post meaningful results for investors over the previous few years after a number of changes to the management team. Read more

Kudos

Modest fees.

Risks

New manager Gerard Sullivan doesn't have an extremely long track record at any one fund.

Awful long-term performance.

Constant management and strategy changes give us pause.

The outcome of Putnam's firmwide changes is unknown at this point. Read more

Strategy

This is Putnam's flagship large-blend offering. Management looks for undervalued stocks with sturdy balance sheets and catalysts for growth. The fund keeps its sector weightings within 5 percentage points of the S&P 500 and holds approximately 100 stocks. Read more

Management

Putnam fired fundamental manager Rich Cervone in June 2008 and quantitative manager Jim Wiess in November 2008. Gerard Sullivan, former manager of American Century Fundamental Equity, took the helm in July 2008. Rob Brookby, that fund's comanager, joined the fund in September but left in January 2009 to run Putnam Growth Opportunities. Read more

Inside Scoop

This chronic underperformer has been extremely unstable. It has experienced six manager departures since mid-2002. Turnover within the analyst ranks has been high as well. Read more

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