They weren't bullish enough. Abby Joseph Cohen's predictions are exceeded by mid-March, you know it's a bull market. In the U.S., funds generally did better if they invested in big-company stocks.
Most funds hold a large proportion of smaller stocks.
But with such large returns to stock funds in recent years, most investors don't seem to care that their managers haven't even matched the market for more than three years. Many investors may not even realize that their U.S. stock funds aren't keeping up with index funds. Still, even though they didn't match the market, investors in even average-performing stock funds doubled their money in the past three years. Every type of mutual fund made money in the quarter, including funds that had been horror shows last year. Asia's stock markets began the year by continuing their plunge in early January.