20 Years of 5 Star Management

SCI Completed 20 Years of Morningstar Rated 5-Star Management

Our President, B. Clark Stamper was the Portfolio Manager of the Wells Fargo Strategic Municipal Bond Fund for just over 20 years – from June 14, 1990 through July 11, 2010, first as an Employee of Davis Advisers (previously named Venture Advisers) until July 1995 when the sub-advisery management contract of The Fund was transferred to Stamper Capital & Investments, Inc. upon its founding.

Using our upside potential, downside protection risk-adjusted management strategy The Fund (Wells Fargo Strategic Municipal Bond Fund, previously named Evergreen Strategic Municipal Bond Fund, previously named Evergreen High Income Municipal Bond Fund, previously named Davis Tax-Free High High Income Fund, previously named Venture High Income Muni, previously named Venture Muni Plus (+)) earned Morningstar’s highest risk-adjusted Five-Star Rating many times including the ten years ending June 2000 and the ten years ending June 2010 – so five stars for two contiguous ten year periods.  See the table below for an example.

Fund Name
(at the time)
PeriodEndingCategoryStar Rating
(5 max)
Number of Competitors
Davis Tax-Free High Income B5 Years12/31/1996Municipal5 stars out of 5580
Evergreen High Income Municipal Bond Fund I10 Years12/31/2000
Muni National Short5 stars out of 516
Evergreen Strategic Municipal Bond Fund I10 Years4/30/2001Muni National Short5 stars out of 527
Wells Fargo Advantage Strategic Municipal Bond Fund I10 Years6/30/2010Muni National Short5 stars out of 542

Note the number of competitors in the table dropped as Morningstar added the short term municipal bond fund category to which The Fund was moved.  Previously, all municipal bond funds had been in the same general muncipal bond fund category.  Also, note that few funds had such long lives as essentially all One and Two star risk-adjusted rated funds (Morningstar Risk-adjusted Rating) are closed or merged away due to their poor track records.  This “survivorship bias” means that those survivors generally have performed even better than reported since Morningstar does not include performance of any funds that no longer exist at the end of the period being reported.  Accordingly, there are many more funds rated in the shorter time periods (three and five years).  We are proud that The Fund also earned five star risk-adjusted ratings in shorter periods (three and five years) during most of the periods during Clark’s twenty year portfolio management of The Fund.

Stamper Capital & Investments no longer has a sub-advisery contract to manage the Evergreen Strategic Municipal Bond Fund, as the management contract ended July 11th, 2010 when Wells Fargo brought its management in house after it had acquired Evergreen Funds, a subsidary of Wachovia, which was merged into it following the Financial Crash.

Also, you may be interested in the following article on the same topic:  An in-depth performance review of portfolio manager Clark Stamper’s 20 year record as mutual fund manager.  This article shows that Stamper was able to have one of the longest tenures managing a municipal bond fund – for over 20 years in the industry all while producing superior risk-adjusted returns over 20 years (ending 6/30/2010), when compared to the competition.  Read:  Clark Stamper Completes a Superior 20-Year Run Managing the Former Evergreen Strategic Municipal Bond Fund

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Stamper Capital & Investments, Inc.
Fee-Based Municipal Bond Experts for Over 25 Years