MADSX focuses most on consumer discretionary and tech stocks, with top holdings like TSLA and NET.
Fresh off of his stellar year in 2024, Dennis Lynch is Business Insider's Investor of the Month for January.
Lynch is a legendary fund manager at Morgan Stanley, consistently outperforming his peers for years by investing in high-flying growth stocks. But when the growth-stock rout of 2022 came, Lynch's funds got hit hard -- and harder than most.
His Institutional Advantage Fund (MADSX), the largest he oversees with $4.1 billion in assets, was down as much as 75% from November 2021 to January 2023. According to Morningstar data, the fund was in the bottom 2% of its peer group in both 2021 and 2022.
But over the last couple of years, especially since late 2023, Lynch has started to forge a comeback. MADSX rose 48% in 2023 and 39% in 2024. So far in 2025, it's up another 9%.
But while near-term surges are nice, Lynch's team is betting these names will deliver big returns over the long term.
"We find these companies through fundamental research. Our emphasis is on secular growth, and as a result short-term market events are not as meaningful in the stock selection process," the fund's 2024 fourth-quarter commentary said.
"We focus on assessing company prospects over a five year investment horizon," the report continued. "Current portfolio positioning reflects what we believe are the best long-term investment opportunities."
Those considered for BI's Investor of the Month include managers of US-listed mutual funds or ETFs, those whose funds have outperformed peers in a given month, and those whose funds are outperforming a benchmark index (in most cases this will be the S&P 500) on a trailing 12-month basis. Leveraged funds are not considered.
One of the goals of this column is to highlight a variety of funds. While the Kinetics Paradigm fund was the best-performing fund in January, as shown below, we featured the fund and its manager, Peter Doyle, as BI's Investor of the Month in both October and November. Going forward, we'll update the leaderboard so readers can track the year's top performers alongside our monthly selections.