The Investment Company Institute recently distributed its 2006 Fact Book and it makes for some interesting reading. The umbrella organization for mutual funds reported that there are currently 8,454 open-end mutual funds and 634 closed-end funds.

Total assets for all of the funds exceed $9 trillion with slightly more than fifty percent being in stock mutual funds. Shareholders added $192 billion of new cash (net) to their funds in 2005. Money market funds had an increase of $63 billion. More than 146,000 people are employed in the industry with about one-third of them in account servicing. The major center for employment in funds is in the Eastern states such as Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Florida.

More than half of the mutual funds assets are held in tax-deferred accounts and tax-exempt funds. Approximately 60% of the shareholders indicated they bought their first fund from a defined contribution retirement plan and there are over 90 million individuals in the United States that have mutual funds.

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average was initiated, one of the companies in the average was General Electric. It remains as the only original company still in the DJIA.

GE has always been near the top of the stocks held by our members in the Top 100 that is announced by Better Investing each April. Do you, or your investment club, hold GE?

The stock currently sells at about 17 times estimated earnings with a yield of 2.9%. Of the 17 security analysts closely following the stock, their projected growth rate over the next five years is 11%. Annual revenues are expected to top $182 billion this year, a figure that many nations would like to have for their GNP. Without question, it is a huge company.

Today, it was announced by the chairman that GE plans to increase its activity in India with a plan to increase revenues in that country to $8 billion by 2010 and previous guidance stated that revenues should reach $10 billion in China by 2008. GE is looking to foreign markets to increase sales.

Give us your thoughts as to future growth and if a P/E ratio of 17 seems reasonable. Is is a core holding? Does 11% seem reasonable? Over the past ten years, the historical growth of E/S has been slightly below 10%.

David Wendell was once the president of David L. Babson & Co. before moving to New Hampshire and starting his own money management firm. The famiy and associates have carried on the investment philosophy that David brought with him.

In their most recent newsletter, it concentrated on a disciplined approach to investing and emphasized the benefits of long-term investing in growing companies with proven track records. It listed 18 stocks with superior records when compared with the S&P 500 and the past ten years record of E/S growth. They include:

Abbott Labs (10%), Amgen (19%), Auto Data Proc.(12%), Biomet (17%), Cisco Systems (28%), Hershey (10%), Home Depot (24%), Johnson & Johnson (15%), Linear Tech. (18%), McGraw-Hill (14%), Medtronic (20%), Paychex (26%), PepsiCo (8%), Stryker (22%), Sysco (16%), Walgreen (17%), Wal-Mart (15%), Wrigley (10%). The average E/S growth of those companies was 17% compared to the S&P 500 Index at 9%.

That's a list of pretty well-known companies. Are there others you would add? If not, are there some that are not necessarily industry leaders that you are looking at?