The Best Stock Funds of 2023
The ‘Magnificent Seven’ tech stocks helped drive a rebound at many large-cap funds after a dismal 2022. The winner surged 65.2%.
6 min
Large-cap companies led the way in 2023, benefiting the money managers who believed in them.
Driven by a rebound in large and megacap stocks, in particular the “Magnificent Seven” technology companies, mutual-fund managers who saw double-digit losses in the market rout in 2022 found themselves rewarded for their patience this past year.
Nine of the top 10 stock funds in The Wall Street Journal’s Winners’ Circle survey of mutual funds, which covers the 12-month period ended Dec. 31, are in Morningstar’s large-cap growth category—often with big weightings in outperforming sectors such as technology, communications services and consumer discretionary. Those S&P 500 sectors notched total returns, including dividends, of 57.8%, 55.8% 42.4%, respectively, easily topping the broader market’s 26.3% result.
Still, the Magnificent Seven paced the market. These stocks—Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla—all gained more than 48% last year.
Nvidia, whose chips have become synonymous with exploding interest in artificial intelligence, was the biggest winner among those stocks with a gain of 239%. It was followed by Facebook parent Meta at 194% and Tesla at 102%. These were popular holdings among the top-performing funds in the latest survey, though it varied by the individual manager.
Excluding those stocks, the S&P 500’s return was only 9.9%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. In other words, the Magnificent Seven accounted for more than half of the index’s 2023 performance and boosted the returns of many funds as well.
Still, there was plenty of good performance across mutual funds, and it wasn’t always contingent on those seven stocks. A rising tide lifts most boats.
Survey parameters
For the latest 12-month period, more than 1,000 of the 1,191 funds tracked in the Journal’s survey made double-digit gains. The average fund returned 19.7%, and only four funds registered declines.
To qualify for inclusion in the Winners’ Circle, funds must be actively managed U.S.-stock funds with more than $50 million in assets and a record of three years or more, as well as meet a handful of other criteria. The survey excludes index and sector funds, funds that employ leverage strategies and most quantitative funds. The results are calculated by Morningstar Direct.
As always, this quarterly competition isn’t designed to create a “buy list” of funds for readers, but to demonstrate the ways that specific investment strategies benefited from recent market trends. Some of the funds that were highlighted a year ago have fallen in the rankings just as growth portfolios have grabbed the limelight—and that phenomenon isn’t uncommon.
Moreover, not all funds cited in these quarterly surveys may be available to investors, and they may have elements that make them unsuitable for some investors, ranging from their fee structure to their longer-term performance or volatility.
Take the latest No. 1 fund, for example. The $500 million Virtus Zevenbergen Innovative Growth Stock Fund (SAGAX) lost 55.4% in 2022 and 10.1% in 2021 as tech stocks tumbled amid the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike campaign and recession worry.
The fund returned 65.2% last year, however, thanks to the big turnaround for the large-cap growth stocks.
Patience paid off
“Markets and management teams spent all of 2022 fearing and preparing for a recession that has so far failed to appear, but that excess pessimism really swung the pendulum too far in terms of market sentiment,” says Joe Dennison, a portfolio manager of the Virtus fund. “That has created some great opportunities for patient long-term investors.”
It holds five of the Magnificent Seven, three of which—Tesla, Nvidia and Amazon—are among its top 10 holdings. Tesla, its largest holding, stands at 7.7% of the fund.
These stocks aren’t new to Dennison and his co-managers. The fund first bought shares of Nvidia in 2017. Its holdings in Tesla and Amazon date to 2010 and 2008, respectively.
Dennison says the biggest contributors to the fund’s 2023 performance besides Tesla and Nvidia were MercadoLibre, an e-commerce company in Latin America, and Shopify, an e-commerce business platform. Those stocks gained 86% and 124% last year, respectively.
The Virtus fund doesn’t shy away from high valuations. As of Dec. 29, the trailing price-to-earnings ratio of stocks it holds was 70.4, excluding negative earnings. This approach, however, can be volatile.
Indeed, Dennison acknowledges “there will be volatility and periods of underperformance,” but he adds that it’s important to focus on longer-term performance and stick with companies that the managers believe in.
Best of the rest
No. 2 in the latest survey, with a return of 59.1%, is the $290 million Value Line Larger Companies Focused Fund (VALLX), which holds all of the Magnificent Seven. They were initially put into the fund before 2023—though it did add to Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and Tesla in the first nine months of last year.
It trimmed its positions in Apple and Meta over that stretch.
The fund’s manager, Cindy Starke, says that 2023 was all about “adding to names that we had more conviction in,” rather than trying to unearth new stocks.
Starke looks for companies she thinks can increase sales at a three-year annualised compound rate of 10% or more and annualised earnings growth of at least 15% for three to five years.
She points out that the fund had broad stock appreciation last year: 25 of the holdings gained at least 50% over the year’s first three quarters. (That fund and others release quarterly holdings with a lag after the quarter ends, but performance is updated daily.)
Besides the Magnificent Seven, the fund’s winners included Uber Technologies, which appreciated 149% in 2023. It was put in the portfolio in the fourth quarter of 2021 and was the fund’s largest holding, at 6.5%, as of Sept. 30. Starke increased her holding in 2023.
When she added Uber to the fund in 2021, she recalls, “I just thought it was very undervalued” and that “the growth model would mature.”
Other top holdings include Nvidia, initially put into the fund in 2018; Microsoft (2020); Alphabet (2011) and Tesla (2021).
Two other big gainers for that fund: Advanced Micro Devices, which leapt 127% last year, and cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings, which rose 143%.
At the same time, Starke did plenty of selling. She trimmed the fund to 39 names from 47 over the first three quarters of 2023, jettisoning stocks such as Goldman Sachs, Walt Disney, Bank of America, Estée Lauder and Devon Energy. “I just got out of the names that didn’t offer me the same kind of growth opportunity,” she says.
Rounding out the top four funds are the $500 million Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund (BFTHX), which returned 57.2%, and the $11 billion Fidelity Blue Chip Growth K6 Fund (FBCGX), up 55.6%.
An outlier
A party crasher at No. 5 is the Morgan Stanley Inception Portfolio (MSSGX)—the lone fund in the top 10 outside of the large-cap growth category.
It toils in small-cap issues, which lagged behind large-caps last year. The Russell 2000 index of small stocks returned 16.9% in 2023, trailing the S&P 500 by nearly 10 percentage points.
But the Inception portfolio punched well above its weight, notching a return of 54.4%.
The fund’s managers aren’t afraid to make outsize bets. As of Sept. 30, its information-technology weighting was 38%, compared with 21.4% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index—the fund’s benchmark.
One of its best holdings as of Sept. 30 was Affirm Holdings, which runs a buy now, pay later platform. The stock gained more than 400 % last year.
But that small-cap fund is an outlier in the Winners’ Circle. It is the only one outside of the large-cap growth category among the top 24 finishers in the survey.
At No. 6 is the $25 billion Harbor Capital Appreciation Fund (HACAX), returning 53.7%. As of Sept. 30, the Magnificent Seven accounted for six of its top 10 holdings.
The fund’s managers did make some hay in healthcare, an unloved S&P 500 sector that otherwise eked out a 2.1% return last year, including dividends.
One such healthcare winner it held is Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical company’s stock returned 61%, helped by its strong position in a nascent class of drugs for weight loss.
“We’re trying to find companies that can generate above-average growth rates sustainably over an investment cycle,” says Blair Boyer, a co-manager of the fund.
Another healthcare company that fit the bill for the fund is Novo Nordisk. Its portfolio includes the Wegovy weight-loss drug. The stock was up more than 50% last year.
The fund unloaded its positions in Thermo Fisher Scientific, which sells testing equipment and measurement tools to laboratories, and life-sciences company Danaher. Thermo Fisher Scientific’s stock fell 4%, and Danaher dropped by 2%.
One of the fund’s biggest sector bets last year was consumer discretionary, representing 25% of the fund at the end of the third quarter, compared with a 16% representation in the Russell 1000 Growth Index.
Shares of vacation-rental company Airbnb, another of the fund’s holdings, surged by 59%.
Ultimately, while large-caps mutual funds enjoyed the Magnificent Seven-led rebound last year, it’s impossible to say how they will fare in 2024 given uncertainty about the economy and the path of the Fed’s monetary policy.
But despite fickle market sentiment, managers of top-performing funds say the key to their success is patience and staying true to their strategy even when things look bleak, as in 2022.
“It was about staying the course, having the conviction and adhering to our investment philosophy in good times and bad,” says Starke of the Value Line fund.
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The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.
6 min
The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.
This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.
1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo
There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.
She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.
2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.
If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.
His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.
3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast
Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.
Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.
4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media
Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.
The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.
5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor
The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.
Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.
6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30
Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.
Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.
7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group
The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.
When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.
8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator
The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.
Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.
9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest
Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.
The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.
10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News
Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.
Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.
That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.
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