When Growth Rebounds.

The glory days of giant growth companies like Cisco Systems and Nokia, and the funds that owned them, came to an abrupt end in March 2000. Since then the market's lead has gone to value stocks, especially small ones. Typical of the winners in the past five years: Ball Corp., which makes cans and containers for the food and beverage industry.

Could it be time for a rotation back to big-cap growth? It could well be. There are signs that at long last the market has reached a turning point. Since it hit a 2005 low in April the Russell 1000 Growth Index has advanced 11% while its value counterpart is up just 8%. Sure, this may be a temporary spurt, yet it is all but inevitable that at some point growth will get another chance to outperform, as it did in the 1990s.

If you want to make a bet on this sector rotation, you have to set aside the usual instinct to prefer funds with good recent records. The most plausible candidates for a big-cap revival are funds with lousy five-year returns. You don't want an extreme loser, like White Oak Select Growth Fund, which is off an annualized 18% since its September 2000 peak. But you might opt for TCW Galileo Select Equities, which has a very decent ten-year return despite suffering in the 2000-02 crash. TCW Galileo has also proved itself in the recent rebound. It has a delivered an 18.2% compound annual return over the past three years.

We found four other no-load, large-cap growth funds with very good long-term and short-term records--despite weakness over the last five years (see table).

Fidelity Growth Company Fund is one that would benefit from a resurgence of big-company growth stocks. Run since 1997 by Steven Wymer, this $25 billion portfolio has big bets on Google, up 53% this year, and biotech outfit Celgene, which has doubled since January.

Google is also the biggest holding in the $7.2 billion Harbor Capital Appreciation Fund, where Spiros Segalas has been running things since 1990. Other recent winners here: drug company Genentech and oil services provider Schlumberger. Segalas likes stocks with fast-growing revenues. A quarter of the fund is invested in hardware and software names, with another quarter in health care. If you can meet the $50,000 minimum for the "institutional" shares at Harbor, you'll get a bargain on the expenses: 67 cents per $100 of assets annually.

Janus Mercury suffered three horrendous years during the bear market, losing 23%, 30% and 29%. Under new manager David Corkins (as of two and a half years ago), and with a better investment climate, it has come back, beating the market over the last three years.

If you want to make a bet on sector rotation to large-company growth but not a bet on active portfolio management, consider the cheap--and tax-efficient--Vanguard Growth Index Fund. Yearly fees are only 22 cents per $100 of assets. Though it has 426 stocks, a quarter of the fund's $10 billion in net assets are in ten names. The biggest positions: Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Intel and IBM.