Imagine if you were forced to shop only on your block, even though you knew better bargains existed at the stores across town. Few people want such constraints, and that includes investors trying to rebuild their portfolios in a shaky market.

Increasingly, people are looking for fund managers who are free to roam the world and hunt in different asset classes to turn up the best bargains. According to mutual fund consultant Strategic Insight, investors plowed almost $18 billion in new money into go anywhere stock funds in 2009 a large figure in itself, but even more remarkable since last year stock funds, in general, had as much money taken out of as put into them. Some of these funds have gotten rather large. After a year of solid returns and with billions of dollars poured into it by investors, the $36 billion BlackRock Global Allocation fund (highlighted in March s Award-Winning Funds ) is now one of the nation s 25 biggest mutual funds.

Financial advisers say the flexibility of these go-anywhere funds is even more important at a time when markets are contending with so much uncertainty. These managers are in the trenches, says John Eckel, a fee-only planner at Pinnacle Investment Management. We don t want to tie their hands. In the wake of the credit crisis, advisers are reassessing how they diversify assets, increasingly opting to delegate the task to professional money managers, says Loren Fox, senior research analyst at Strategic Insight.

Go-anywhere funds are hard to pigeonhole since they don t all track a specific benchmark. But global flexible funds, a proxy for managers with the most latitude, have handily outperformed Standard & Poor s 500 index. These funds returned an average of 4.5 percent a year over the past five years, while the S&P 500 was essentially flat, according to research firm Lipper. The go-anywhere funds lost money during the crash but still held up much better than the broader market, a fact not lost on some planners. We re not looking for unpredictable go-anywhere cowboys but rather managers who can make more money by shielding the portfolio from losses, says Tim Maurer, director of planning at Baltimore-based fee-only advisory firm Financial Consulate.

It seems like a no-brainer to pick a fund with few limits, but that very flexibility is a deterrent for advisers who want to retain control over how their portfolios look. These funds don t fit Lego-like with other, more focused funds. The flexibility also means a bad call by a manager could result in the fund trailing the market or its peers which is why it s important to stick with a manager who has used the strategy successfully for years, says Russell Kinnel, Morningstar director of mutual fund research. Many of the funds also are pricey to buy, often charging load fees that take a percentage of money off the top of any investment.

That said, these funds are a good core holding for investors with smaller portfolios who would not otherwise be able to diversify, says Diahann Lassus, president of Lassus Wherley, a New Jersey wealth advisory firm that manages $285 million. For larger portfolios, Lassus has been allocating as much as 10 percent of assets to these funds to offer some protection if the market sinks.

Our Picks

These go-anywhere mutual funds are run by managers who have survived several bouts of market turmoil.

Assets: $2.7 billion
Average Annual Return
Since Inception (1993): 11.1 percent
Manager Steve Romick shifts assets among mostly U.S. stocks, bonds and cash, with about 40 percent in cash as of December. This no-load fund s returns rank it alongside other top-performing moderate-allocation funds.

Assets: $3.4 billion
Average Annual Return
Since Inception (2008): 18.1 percent
A fund that charges a 5 percent load (it takes money off the top of any investment) and is less than two years old might make investors pause. But managers Charles de Vaulx and Chuck de Lardemelle built great track records at their old employer, First Eagle. Gold and cash are the fund s top holdings.

Assets: $14 billion
Average Annual Return
Since Inception (2003): 6.3 percent
This fund of funds, managed by Robert Arnott, has an array of funds that invest in foreign stocks, commodities and almost anything else. The aim is to generate a return that beats the inflation rate by at least 5 percent. The fund has a 3.75 percent load.

Assets: $79.5 billion
Average Annual Return
Since Inception (1987): 9.7 percent
This team-managed fund often favors high-yielding dividend stocks, making it a more conservative go-anywhere fund. As a result, it typically lags when the market is on a tear. The fund has a 5.75 percent load.

Source: Morningstar
Data as of 2/12/10