Commentary

A lot of funds can say they invest like the Oracle of Omaha. This week Warren Buffett announcedBerkshire Hathaway was buying the 77.4% ofBurlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation that it didn't already own for $100 per share in cash and stock.

Click here for a look at some of the funds that benefited on Wednesday when Burlington shares shot up about 30% on news of the deal.

Obvious winners were funds that track transportation indexes, such asiShares Dow Jones Transportation Average, which had 11.2% of its assets in Burlington as of Oct. 31 and advanced 5.31% on Wednesday compared with 0.24% for the S&P 500 Index.

Davis Real Estate was an unlikely winner. What's a real estate fund doing with a large stake in a railroad company? Well, Burlington owns about 32,000 miles of rights-of-way running through more than half of the United States. This real estate is very valuable not only to Burlington but also to power and utility companies that often use it.

Hodges could have been a bigger winner, too. The father and son management duo of Don and Craig Hodges recently said they started buying railroad companies in 2004 because they thought the companies' increasing pricing power wasn't reflected in their share prices. Burlington is up more than 100% over the past five years while the S&P 500 is flat. Between Sept. 30 and June 30, they had cut their Burlington Northern stake by 40%, but the fund still increased 2.50% on Wednesday.

Here are other funds that may have benefited from the deal. The list includes offerings with more than $100 million in assets, at least a 2% position in Burlington as of recent portfolio disclosures, and a better return than the S&P 500 on Wednesday.

To see the tables, click here. http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=315082

Recent buyers, such as several American funds and Van Kampen American Franchise, caught the party, too. Growth Fund of America is the largest mutual fund shareholder of the company, but its stake barely makes an impact on performance for the $150 billion fund. American Franchise not only has a large stake, it also was one of the biggest buyers.

Fidelity Puts Analysts in Charge of More Funds
Fidelity is turningFidelity Stock Selector into an analyst-run fund. James Catudal, who recently took over Fidelity Growth & Income, is out, and select fund managers Bob Lee and Ben Hesse, who lead the firm's consumer staples and financials coverage, respectively, will replace him. The fund will be sector neutral for the most part, but Chris Sharpe and Geoff Stein have the flexibility to make moderate sector bets.

This theme continues atFidelity Small Cap Independence. Richard Thompson remains, but he's being joined by several new managers who will each manage the fund according to their sector specialty. Fidelity rolled out this management structure for the target-date funds earlier in the year. This isn't an analyst-run fund, per se, but it's another example of Fidelity divvying up a fund by sector.

This isn't the first time Fidelity has put sector specialists in control of funds. They installed this setup a few years ago at one of Fidelity's variable annuity portfolios, though with different sector specialists. In 2008, Fidelity put the group in charge of the equity portion of Fidelity Balanced, and more recently, it was given a slice of the Freedom funds.

Fidelity has indicated there would be more examples of this sector-based, team-managed model. While it is too early to declare the era of the eclectic star manager dead at Fidelity, this definitely runs contrary to Fidelity's tradition.

John Hancock Modifies Target-Date Retirement Glide Paths
John Hancock will change the glide path of its target-date funds, according to filings. The biggest change is that the firm is extending the funds' post-retirement glide path. Previously, the funds ended at a static asset mix at their respective retirement date. Now the funds will take another 20 years to reduce their equity weightings. John Hancock also will moderately reduce overall stock exposure beginning with the Lifecycle 2030 fund. Even with these changes, Hancock still has one of the more aggressive glide paths in the industry, said Morningstar senior fund analyst Josh Charlson.

Legendary Internet Fund Gives Up on Internet
Munder Internet, the largest of the five remaining funds with "Internet" in their name, will be changing its name to Munder Growth Opportunities by January. While the fund's new strategy may broaden its investment options, a substantial chunk of assets will continue to be invested in Internet-related companies. Ever since the fund's assets grew to more than $10 billion back in March 2000, Munder Internet has suffered from outflows nearly every month as the fund has a trailing 10-year loss of 7.5% annualized. The average investor did even worse as assets peaked right when the bubble burst, and the Investor Returns for the trailing 10 years is a brutal negative 14.33%. The four remaining "Internet" labeled funds have less than $100 million in assets under management.

Third Avenue to Offer New Share Classes
Third Avenue plans to roll out new investor share classes of its existing funds at the beginning of 2010 that will include 12b-1 fees and cost 10 to 20 basis points more than the existing share classes. The new share classes will carry a $2,500 investment minimum, and the existing share classes will have their minimum investment levels raised to $100,000. Existing shareholders will be grandfathered into these new institutional share classes.

Etc.
Now, Schwab clients can purchaseSchwab ETFs with no commissions. Because their ETFs already have some of the lowest fees around, shareholders can now dollar-cost average into some of the most popular indexes at a lower cost than Vanguard or Fidelity mutual fund or ETF shareholders.

Value Line, Inc. and the Securities and Exchange Commission have announced that Value Line's previously reported offer to settle an SEC investigation begun in 2005 has been accepted by the Commission. The SEC order is available here, and it details the overcharges paid by mutual fund shareholders on brokerage commissions and also that Value Line deceived the independent directors about the arrangement.

RiskMetrics is buyingKLD, a leading provider of socially responsible indexes. KLD indexes are used by numerous SRI mutual funds, including TIAA-CREF Social Choice Equity.

Evergreen has added three portfolio managers to its municipal-bond team. Robert Miller will comanageEvergreen Intermediate Municipal Bond,Evergreen Pennsylvania Municipal Bond, andEvergreen North Carolina Municipal Bond. Lyle Fitterer will comanageEvergreen Municipal Bond andEvergreen Short-Intermediate Municipal Bond. Lastly, Stephen Galiani will comanageEvergreen California Municipal Bond.

Kevin Booth joined the management team ofRS High Yield Bond.

Alex Peters and Matt Quinlan join the portfolio management team ofJohn Hancock Income.

Lee Montag replaces Nick de Peyster as comanager ofUBS PACE Large Company Growth Equity.

Aaron Balsam and Andreas Koester are the newest portfolio managers to be added toUBS US Allocation. The other member of the team, Curt Custard, was hired in April 2009.

Jeffrey Geffen replaces Kathleen Bramlage as sole portfolio manager ofValue Line Tax-Exempt.

James Welch replaces Douglas Gaylor as primary portfolio manager ofDreyfus Short-Intermediate Municipal Bond.

Michael Crowe is off the management team ofTransamerica Partners Small Value.

Kevin Chan is off the management team ofJP Morgan China Region.

Shareholders ofFirst American Arizona Tax-Free are being asked to vote on a merger intoFirst American Tax-Free.

Neil Robson is no longer a comanager ofPioneer Global Equity, leaving Piergaetano Laccarino as the sole portfolio manager.

Shareholders ofDreyfus Discovery are being asked to vote on a merger intoDreyfus/The Boston Company Small/Mid Cap Growth.

Director of mutual fund research Russ Kinnel, senior fund analyst Chris Davis, and fund analyst David Falkof contributed to this report.

Ryan Leggio does not own shares in any of the securities mentioned above.