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About Barron's Best Fund Families
Source: Barron's, "Best Fund Families of 2024." February 27, 2025. Used with permission. ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

The 2024 Barron’s Best Fund Families List ranks the active management ability of qualifying companies. Rankings are based on the asset-weighted one-year returns as of 12/31/24, excluding 12b-1 fees and sales loads, of a company’s actively managed fund line up in five asset class categories: US Equity, World Equity, Mixed Asset, Taxable Bond, and Tax-Exempt Bond as determined by Barron’s. Overall ranking based on aggregate, weighted score across the five asset categories. Performance data from Refinitiv Lipper.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Lord Abbett ranked overall #1 of 48, #6 of 46, and #23 of 46 for the 1- ,5-, and 10-year periods respectively. Lord Abbett ranked #1 of 48 in US Equity, #2 of 48 in Mixed Asset, #2 of 48 in Taxable Bond, and #5 of 48 in Tax-Exempt Bond.

How We Ranked the Fund Families
In ranking mutual and exchange-traded funds, our aim is to measure manager skill, independent of expenses beyond annual management fees. That is why we calculate returns before any 12b-1 fees are deducted. Similarly, fund loads, or sales charges, aren’t included in our calculation of returns.

Each fund’s performance is measured against all of the other funds in its LSEG Lipper category, with a percentile ranking of 100 being the highest and one the lowest. This result is then weighted by asset size relative to the fund family’s other assets in its general classification. If a family’s biggest funds do well, that boosts its overall ranking, and vice versa.

To be included in the ranking, a firm must have at least three funds in the general equity category, one in world equity, one in mixed equity such as a balanced or target-date fund, two taxable bond funds, and one national tax-exempt bond fund.

Single-sector and country equity funds are factored into the rankings as general equity. We exclude all index funds, but include actively managed ETFs and so-called smart-beta ETFs, which are passively managed but created from active strategies.

Finally, the score is multiplied by the weighting of its general classification, as determined by the Lipper universe of funds. The category weightings for 2024 were general equity, 39.1%; mixed asset, 21.6%; world equity, 15.3%; taxable bond,20.1%; and tax-exempt bond, 3.9%.

The category weightings for the five-year results were general equity, 39%; mixed asset, 21.7%; world equity, 15.3%; taxable bond, 19.9%; and tax-exempt bond, 4%.For the 10-year list, they were general equity, 40%; mixed asset, 22.1%; world equity, 14.8%; taxable bond, 19.2%; and tax[1]exempt bond, 3.9%. The weightings may not total 100 due to rounding.

How the scoring works: Say a fund in the general U.S. equity category has $500million in assets, accounting for half of the firm’s assets in that category, and its performance lands it in the 75th percentile for the category. The first calculation would be 75 times 0.5, which comes to 37.5. That score is then multiplied by 39.1%, general equity’s overall weighting in Lipper’s universe. So, it would be 37.5 times0.391, which equals 14.66. Similar calculations are done for each fund in our study; then the numbers are added for each category and overall. The shop with the highest total score wins. The same process is repeated to determine the five- and 10-year rankings.