The financial crisis that has plagued the economy and the stock market the last two years will at some point slip into history like other predicaments that preceded it. Investors will look back on that time and tell war stories about where they were when Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns went down. The events of 2008 won t be a simple footnote, but eventually (we hope), the market will return to some kind of normalcy.

There are a group of mutual funds who have seen market upswings and downward spirals and lived to invest another day. In fact, some funds can trace their beginnings all the way back to the last time things got this bad the Great Depression. Talk about seeing everything the market can throw at you.

This week, we are focusing on the funds that have seen it all and have managed to navigate the good and the bad. We started with a universe of 1,691 funds that have managed to post at least an average annual return of 11% since their inceptions. We didn t want to reward a hot newcomer who might have posted that return over a single year, so we also looked for funds with above average three- and five-year track records. That left us with 27 funds. They are listed on the table below.

The average fund on our list has been around since 1993. That means it has lived through three presidents, the tech boom and bust, the long-term capital debacle, two recessions, the emergence of China, and countless corporate scandals that made stocks rise and fall. During that time, these funds have averaged an annual return of 12.9%. That s almost two percentage points better than the estimate for the historical return of the broad market.

If anything, studying returns since inception can help investors look past such short periods of a year or two. Indeed, (TWCGX) has been around since 1959, according to Lipper. Investors can study how a fund and its manager if it s a long-tenured one did during all kinds of market conditions and get a reasonable expectation about how they would handle similar future events. It s not a foolproof strategy, but it can provide some decent intelligence. One note though: Just because a fund returned an average annual 14.2% over the last 20 years doesn t mean it will repeat that past track record.

The Criteria: The equity funds on this list have averaged an annual return of greater than 11% since their inceptions (11% being the historical return of the broad market). They also have performance track records during the trailing three- and five-year time periods that put them in the top 25% of their peer groups. They require a minimum investment under $5,000, are open to new money, and charge less than a 1.5% expense ratio. We did not include load funds.

Recipe

Fund Type = *
Annualized 3-Year Return (%) = Display Only
Rank in Classification (%) (3 year performance) <= 25
Annualized 5-Year Return (%) = Display Only
Rank in Classification (%) (5 year performance) <= 25
Return since Inception (5) .= 11
Expense Ratio <= 1.5%
Load Fund (type) = No Load
Minimum Initial Investment <= $5,000
Open to New Investors = Yes
Total Net Assets ($ millions) >= 50
Year-to-Date Return (%) = Display Only

*screen does not include fixed income funds