By James K. Glassman Have some sympathy for money managers. The average stock mutual fund returned 14.5 percent in 1998, according to Lipper Inc., and typical stock accounts performed about the same. Of course, the managers have excuses, or . . . And last year the big stocks did spectacularly well, while most others were mediocre at best. Likewise, despite the Nasdaq composite index's 38.5 percent return, more than half the stocks in the index lost money.
Smart ones do.
Morris and Teach have a special problem. They're value managers in a year that was particularly cruel to value stocks. And Homestead Value itself returned just 8.3 percent, including reinvested dividends. Teach isn't going to change. Reverse course, no.