Contrarian Greenspring Fund A Consistent Winner

One odd name consistently pops up on lists of good low-risk mutual funds: Greenspring.

Manager Chip Carlson describes his style as “modified contrarian;” he looks for stocks that are not actively disliked, but ignored.

His portfolio includes just 26 stocks and leans heavily toward real estate (Town and Country Trust, Mark Centers, Carr Realty). He also owns toy companies (Hasbro, Tyco Toys), unexciting manufacturers (Instrument Systems, First Brands) and a large dose of corporate bonds.

This formula has produced consistent if not huge returns: up 2.9 percent last year and an annual average of 11.6 percent since 1984.

Equity-income funds slip

Investors in the nearly 100 equityincome funds generally forsake a little return for a much smoother ride than they would get with growth stocks. But that has not been the case lately.

The funds, which buy highdividend stocks and a smattering of bonds, returned an average of 6.7 percent a year for the last three years, well ahead of the 5.9 percent recorded for growth funds.

The stellar performance came from the funds’ holdings in cyclical and financial stocks, which were winners for most of the three-year period. Equity-income funds buy these issues - along with utilities’ stocks - for their high yields.

Still, equity-income funds will have trouble maintaining their combination of high returns and low risk.

One way to gauge the riskiness of an equity-income fund is to check its yield. The lower the yield, the less able the fund is to sop up any capital losses, said Jeffrey R. Kelley, associate editor of Morningstar Mutual Funds. For 1994, the group yielded 3.5 percent on average.

IRS lines open Saturdays

The Internal Revenue Service will open its phone lines Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in March, and April 1, 8, and 15. The toll free number is 1-800-829-1040.

The Seattle District answers an average of 13,000 calls a day.