TIAA-CREF Growth & Income InstlTIGRX

Morningstar Rating

Fund Research and Analysis

by Christopher Davis

A sensible ground game makes TIAA-CREF Growth & Income appealing.

This offering isn't flashy. Manager Susan Kempler's bias is in favor of companies with improving fundamentals and reasonable valuations; both her quantitative models and in-depth research focus on those attributes. Read more

Kudos

Low costs for the fund's institutional share class.

The fund is backed by a large and growing group of analysts.

Management has delivered solid results since coming aboard in 2005. Read more

Risks

Fees could rise sharply on the fund's retail share class, making it harder for it to compete.

The fund's benchmark-conscious strategy reduces the risk of underpeformance, but it also makes it harder to outperform. Read more

Strategy

Like its equity-fund siblings, this fund employs a benchmark-conscious approach, keeping sector weightings within 2 percentage points of the S&P 500 Index. Within those sector constraints, manager Susan Kempler employs a growth-at-a-reasonable-price strategy, looking for companies with solid management teams and that generate a lot of free cash flow. Read more

Management

On March 1, 2005, TIAA-CREF named Susan Kempler as the permanent successor to interim managers Hans Erikson and Bill Riegel. Prior to taking charge here, she worked alongside Smith Barney Mid Cap Core lead manager Larry Weissman for seven years and was formally named comanager in 2001. Read more

Inside Scoop

This benchmark-conscious fund isn't a slave to its index. Management looks abroad and down the market-cap spectrum to supplement an S&P 500-centric portfolio. Read more

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