These are Ariel Fund's own holdings, not the firm's. Percentages are of the stock positions in its latest filing — the fund's cash and bonds are not included. It hunts for undervalued small- and mid-sized American companies — businesses with strong franchises that the wider market has overlooked, misunderstood, or simply stopped following — buys them at a discount, and then holds on. This is the patient, value-style approach John W. Rogers Jr. built at his Chicago firm Ariel Investments, and this fund is the house's flagship, the first product the firm ever offered to the public. It launched in November 1986, three years after Rogers founded the firm on his own at age 24, and it was managed by Rogers himself from its first day. What sets this fund apart from the firm's other offerings is that it leans into the smaller end of the market and into the firm's trademark patience. It aims to "arbitrage time," buying shares at an entry price with a comfortable margin of safety and holding them for years rather than quarters, with low turnover — the theory being that short-term market swings are exactly the noise a long owner can ignore. That resolve was tested hard in the late 1990s, when dot-com enthusiasm left value stocks languishing behind high-flying technology names, only to be vindicated once the bubble burst. The approach carried the same awards early on: in his first years running it, Rogers was named co-mutual fund manager of the year by Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance magazine and an all-star mutual fund manager by USA Today. Rogers still leads the fund today, keeping the same patient hunt for unloved quality companies he started with four decades ago.
$2.51B