Barron's Recap: Best Mutual Fund Families

This weekend in

online: the top ranked mutual fund families, as well as the prospects for Samsung, Harvard's endowment, Nielsen, Capitol Federal Financial, AmTrust and more.

"

" by Lawrence C. Strauss. Last year was a particularly good one for the stock pickers, says this week's cover story in

, and that helped boost a number of fund firms to the top of this year's Barron's/Lipper Fund Family Ranking. Sixty-four fund companies made the cut this time. See who came out on top, as well as profiles of the top five.

"Samsung: Ready to Rebound" by Jack Hough says that, even though investors worry about short-term growth at this Korean conglomerate, Samsung's colossal scale gives it advantages over competitors and it sits on a massive cash stockpile. Andrew Bary's "Lessons Learned at Harvard" points out that, though it got slammed in the financial crisis, the Harvard university's endowment has been tweaked, in part to add liquidity. See what its CEO, Jane Mendillo, tells

about her outlook and strategy. In "Nielsen's Measured Approach," Leslie P. Norton makes a case that shares of

could rise up to 40 percent. The company has a near monopoly in measuring TV viewership, and it also has a new growth plan. The Glenmede Small-Cap Equity fund is featured in Steve Garmhausen's "Small Stocks, Big Bets." See how this fairly concentrated fund skews toward smaller stocks, but it reins in the risk by investing in a wide variety of sectors. "A Thrift You Can Bank On" by David Englander suggests that overcapitalized

, a Topeka, Kansas-based savings and loan operator, could produce a 15 percent total return over the next year. In Bill Alpert's "An Insurer's Feat: Turning Losses Into Gains," a case is made that when insurer

shares its quarterly results this week, it must convince investors its profits result from shrewd management rather than aggressive accounting. The CEO spotlight is turned on the architect of

in "Jeffrey Sprecher: ICE's Master of the Markets" by Steven M. Sears. See how Sprecher conquered Wall Street and the world with a sprawling empire of trading exchanges and clearing firms. "It's Not Anti-Job, It's Anti-Work" is an editorial commentary by Thomas G. Donlan in which he discusses the moral dilemma created by Obamacare.

Columns in this weekend's

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