Editor's note: With the markets offering up a seemingly endless parade of surprises, investors are looking for mutual-fund managers who can handle anything thrown at them. In this special report, SmartMoney focuses on funds run by managers who have successfully navigated years worth of market euphoria and panic -- and helped keep investors ahead. We highlight funds that specialize in five categories: large company stocks, foreign stocks, global investments, balanced investments and real estate.

Investors in the New York based Cohen & Steers Realty Shares fund get a product run by two guys who actually played a role in helping the sector recover. In January of last year, the prices of real estate investment trusts were plummeting, and Martin Cohen and his partner, Bob Steers, realized many were starved for cash. Unless we could help the industry access capital, it could go away, says Steers.

So the duo spent months meeting with executives of Real Estate Investment Trusts and Wall Street bankers to get the real estate firms to raise more cash with debt or stock offerings. Cohen and Steers were willing to invest too, putting their own money on the line along with hundreds of millions of dollars from Realty Shares and the other funds that their firm runs. The move was never in our playbook, Steers admits. Some REITs agreed to do it. On Mar. 9, which happened to be Bob Steers s 56th birthday, REIT prices bottomed, and over the next several months, the prices of several of the REITs the fund owned more than doubled. Cohen & Steers Realty Shares returned 32 percent in 2009, making it one of the year s best real estate funds. The $2.3 billion fund has performed better than the majority of its rivals over the past five and 10 years as well.

While fund managers doing more than just managing money could trigger red flags, Cohen and Steers s real estate expertise made it no big deal, says Morningstar analyst John Coumarianos. Cohen and Steers and their 30-analyst, New York based team try to form a big-picture view of real estate, then look for REITs positioned to benefit. The fund s managers traditionally look at measures such as a REIT s price relative to the value of the properties it owns or the amount of cash the REIT generates. But lately, they have paid much more attention to balance sheets, assigning a letter grade to each REIT based on, among several factors, how manageable its debt level is.

To be sure, there are risks involved in Cohen & Steers Realty s focusing on the U.S. market while the domestic economy continues to struggle. REITs holding office buildings and other commercial real estate could be in for a tough slog, since commercial properties have more than $1 trillion in debt maturing over the next three years. But healthier commercial REITs, such as shopping-mall owner Simon Property Group and industrial REIT ProLogis, could use their fresh capital to acquire downtrodden rivals, Steers says. I don t think that is yet built into the stock prices, he adds.

Winner

Managers: Martin Cohen and Robert Steers
Assets: $2.3 billion
Expenses per $10,000: $100
Minimum investment: $10,000
5-Year avg. annual return: 1.7%
10-Year avg. annual return: 10.5%
Quick Take: Looks for big-picture trends and emphasizes certain property types.

Runners-Up

Manager: Kenneth Heebner
Assets: $1.3 billion
Expenses per $10,000: $86
Minimum investment: $2,500
5-Year avg. annual return: 5.9%
10-Year avg. annual return: 18.2%
Quick Take: Heebner is a rapid trader who runs a condensed portfolio of real estate stocks and sometimes veers outside the sector to find good values.

Managers: Steve Shigekawa and Brian Jones
Assets: $86.9 million
Expenses per $10,000: $99
Minimum investment: $1,000
5-Year avg. annual return: 2.6%
10-Year avg. annual return: NA
Quick Take: The fund is finding values in shopping mall and hospital REITs.

15 Award-Winning Funds

• Overview
• U.S. Large-Cap Funds
• Foreign Funds
• Global Funds
• Balanced Funds
• Real Estate Funds
• PLUS: 5 Big Funds to Reconsider