One way to produce an easily understood marriage of risk and return for funds is to adjust the fund return for risk. Funds with high returns that have above-benchmark standard deviations will have their returns proportionally lowered, and funds with lower returns and below-benchmark standard deviations will have their returns adjusted upward proportionally.

The risk-adjusted fund table below lists the top funds by risk-adjusted arithmetic average returns. The benchmark used for return and risk is the Standard and Poor’s 500 index. The returns of all domestic stock funds were adjusted for risk and ranked.

The table reports the risk-adjusted average annual return—what the fund would have returned if it had the same risk as the market—and the average annual return for the three-year period that it did earn. Also reported is the fund’s standard deviation for comparison purposes and the market risk index. Benchmark statistics are reported at the bottom of the table.