Here's a way to calculate the maximum amount of assets a fund should have. 
It's a method developed by David Kovacs of Turner Investment Partners in 
Berwyn, Pa.

1. Find the number of stocks in the portfolio. Fund companies often publish 
this data on their Web sites. Morningstar.com does as well. The Turner Small 
Cap Growth fund, for example, owns 145 stocks.

2. Determine the maximum number of days the manager needs to build positions. 
For aggressive growth funds, use 3 to 4. For conservative growth funds, use 5 
to 6. For value funds, use 10 for small-cap funds, 15 for mid-cap, and 20 or 
more for large-cap. Turner uses 4 for its Small Cap Growth fund.

3. Calculate how easy or difficult the fund's holdings are to trade. This is a 
three-step process:

A) Find the fund's sector weightings. For example, Turner Small Cap Growth has 
34.8% of its assets in small-cap technology stocks, 20% in small-cap 
health-care stocks, 16% in small-cap consumer discretionary stocks, 8.1% in 
small-cap producer durable stocks, 7% in small-cap financial stocks, 4% in 
small-cap utility stocks, 4% in small-cap basic materials and processing 
stocks, 3.6% in small-cap energy stocks, 1.5% in small-cap consumer staple 
stocks, and 1% in small-cap automobile/transportation stocks.

B) Then, find the average daily dollar volume for each sector in the table 
below. (Make sure to use the appropriate market-capitalization ranges. For 
example, for a small-cap fund like Turner Small Cap Growth, the relevant 
technology figure is $17.9 million.)

             Automobiles       Consumer          Consumer    Energy
             & Transport.   Discretionary        Staples
Large        $95.5             $219.1             $93.2       $98.8
Mid          $19.7              $44.3             $23.7       $41.8
Small         $5.0               $6.9              $4.3        $6.7

              Financial       Health Care        Basic Materials  
Large         $107.1          $174.9                  $102.1
Mid            $21.3           $67.7                   $20.6
Small            4.0           $11.0                    $3.7

            Producer Durable        Technology          Utility
Large            $196.6              $647.9              $121.1
Mid               $52.8              $100.2               $17.2
Small              $9.3               $17.9                $5.5

(all figures are in millions)

C) Multiply A and B for each sector. Then add these numbers. For Turner Small 
Cap Growth, the weighted average is $11.3 million

4. Determine how much of a stock's daily volume the fund can buy without 
driving its price higher. For small-cap funds, including Turner's, use 20% or 
0.20, 15% or 0.15 for mid-caps, and 10% or 0.10 for large-caps.

5. Multiply 1, 2, 3, and 4 together. The result is the fund's maximum size, in 
dollars. Turner Small Cap Growth has a capacity of about $1.3 billion. Compare 
this to the fund's actual assets. Remember, capacity will change with market 
conditions and the number of stocks in the fund.


DATA: TURNER INVESTMENT PARTNERS