Polen Growth Fund

Polen Capital

Part of Polen Capital Management

These are Polen Growth 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. This fund buys large, established American businesses with durable competitive advantages and clean balance sheets, then does very little. Polen calls the discipline a business-owner mindset: the team looks for companies whose returns on the capital they deploy compound reliably for years, holds a small portfolio of high-conviction names, and rarely sells, letting earnings growth do the work rather than trading on price swings. The approach is as old as the firm itself — founder David Polen developed it starting in 1989 as the Focus Growth strategy — but the mutual fund that puts it into practice arrived later, launched on September 15, 2010. In the same year, Polen handed the flagship portfolio to Dan Davidowitz, who has led it ever since and today serves as the fund's portfolio manager and the firm's chief investment officer. Davidowitz, who joined Polen in 2005 after stints as an analyst at Value Line and at Osprey Partners, manages it alongside the large-company growth team led by Damon Ficklin. Where the firm's other strategies range abroad — into global and emerging-market stocks, and, since a 2021 acquisition, into high-yield credit — this fund stays home, confining itself to U.S. large-cap growth. The patient, concentrated, low-turnover character it shares with its siblings is here pointed squarely at a handful of household-name American franchises.