Fund Evaluator:

Disciplined Growth Investors Overview

Disciplined Growth Investors (DGIFX) is an actively managed Allocation Moderately Aggressive Allocation fund. DGI launched the fund in 2011.

The investment seeks long-term capital growth, and as a secondary objective, modest income with reasonable risk. The fund normally invests approximately 65% of its assets in equity securities and approximately 35% in fixed-income securities and cash equivalents. The fund's fixed-income securities will generally have a weighted average maturity of five to 10 years. The adviser seeks to generally invest in mid-sized companies with market capitalizations at the time of purchase greater than $1 billion and less than $15 billion. It may invest in both investment-grade and below investment-grade securities.

About Disciplined Growth Investors (DGIFX)

There are 4 members of the management team with an average tenure of 10.34 years: Rob Nicoski (2011), Fred Martin (2011), Nick Hansen (2019), Jason Lima (2021). Management tenure is more important for actively managed funds than passive index funds.

The fund has 1 primary benchmark: S&P 500 (TR) (1970) index with a weighting of 100%. Disciplined Growth Investors has 141 securities in its portfolio. The top 10 holdings constitute 34.5% of the fund’s assets. The fund meets the SEC requirement of being classified as a diversified fund. The fund is not considered to have an ESG focus with its investment selection and management.

Disciplined Growth Investors is part of the Allocation global asset class and is within the Allocation fund group. Disciplined Growth Investors has 6.4% of its portfolio invested in foreign issues. The overall assets allocated to domestic stock is 65.2%. There is 4.1% allocated to foreign stock, and 0.0% is allocated to preferred stocks. The bond allocation as a percentage of total assets is 29.0% (26.8% domestic bond, 2.2% foreign bond and 0.0% convertible bond). Disciplined Growth Investors has 1.6% of the portfolio in cash.

Assets Under Management

The fund has $629 million in total assets, which is above the $570 million average for the Moderately Aggressive Allocation category. Normally, lower assets under management translates to higher average expense ratios, and greater total assets are desired. However, for some investment categories, such as small-cap investing, it may be difficult for the manager to fully employ the desired active strategy if assets grow too large or too quickly.

DGIFX Performance and Fees

The expense ratio measures how much of a fund’s assets are used for administrative expenses and operating expenses, including adviser fees and fees for the transfer agent and custodial services. The Disciplined Growth Investors expense ratio is above average compared to funds in the Moderately Aggressive Allocation category. Disciplined Growth Investors has an expense ratio of 0.78%, which is 24% lower than its category average, making the fund expense ratio grade a B. While it is difficult to predict returns, it is known that high annual expense ratios reduce your rate of return, and excessive fees are difficult to overcome. Active management normally comes with higher expense ratios than passive index management. Certain investment categories such as small company and foreign also normally have higher expense ratios. It is best to compare fund expense ratios against the category averages for meaningful assessments.

High portfolio turnover can translate to higher expenses and lower aftertax returns. Disciplined Growth Investors has a portfolio turnover rate of 19%, indicating that holds its assets around 0.1 years. By way of comparison, the average portfolio turnover is 34% for the Moderately Aggressive Allocation category.

Recently, in the month of July 2026, Disciplined Growth Investors returned -1.2%, which earned it a grade of D, as the Moderately Aggressive Allocation category had an average return of -0.4%. The letter grades of A, B, C, D and F are based upon relative rankings within the investment category. A grade of A, for example, would indicate that the return is in the highest 20% for that time period compared to all funds in that category.

Disciplined Growth Investors has a trailing yield of 0.89%, which is below the 1.47% category average. The fund normally distributes its income quarterly and its capital gains annually.

It’s natural to seek the best-performing investments, but you must consider the relationship between risk and return and the impact of costs and taxes on your realized returns.

Disciplined Growth Investors Grades

Year to date, the fund has returned 15.7%, 5.9 percentage points better than the category, which translates into a grade of A. The fund has returned 16.3% over the past year (grade of D), 13.3% over the past three years (grade of D) and 9.3% per year over the past five years (grade of B) and 11.9% per year over the past 10 years (grade of A).

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