"Kaweske Archives" Home when in 1985 john kaweske joined denver-based invesco trust co. as manager of its year-old financial strategic health sciences portfolio, the fund was about $2 million. by october 31. 1991, he had built it to $718 million, accruing the best track record of any of the more than 4,500 mutual funds on the market. in the past five years, financial health has returned 320.3 percent to investors, and during the past three years while the economy has slid into recession, kaweske's fund returned 248.2 percent. his outstanding performance has not gone unnoticed. most of that growth, over $700 million, had taken place since 1988, when the fund was still small ($10 million) but already posting impressive returns. "when you're number one, everyone wants to be a part of that," acknowledges the 50-year-old portfolio manager and 1966 industrial management graduate. kaweske recently hired an associate, but remains firmly in control of financial health and financial industrial income, a $1.3 billion growth and income fund, which has remained in the top 10 percent of stock funds, posting gains of 117.3 percent and 82.9 percent for the five- and three-year periods, respectively. of course, running a sector fund in the burgeoning health-care industry contributes to his record. kaweske concentrates his holdings in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, hospital supplies, medical technology and health-care delivery. but the secret to his success was something he learned at georgia tech while an undergraduate. "the key to staying on top is the research, doing your homework," he says. "what was invaluable to me at tech was the breadth of the education. certainly in any of the tech curricula you take the basic engineering courses, and they provide a good technical foundation for understanding how science was developed and is developing. that kind of understanding is essential for the research we do, especially when dealing with newer medical technologies." kaweske went on to get a master's in business administration from the university of wyoming in 1968, and he feels that any tech grad aspiring to a securities analyst career should also augment his education with an advanced business degree. but as always, experience shapes the opportunities, and kaweske's early experience was as a research analyst. his first job was with fidelity in boston, which he joined on april fool's day, 1968. he spent three years with fidelity researching oil and gas firms, and the pulp and paper industry. he left fidelity in 1972 to become a securities analyst for aetna life and casualty in the transportation arena, analyzing airlines, railroads, trucking companies. in 1980, he joined ids in minneapolis, where he was again an analyst in the oil and gas industry, as well as doing some work in hotels, restaurants and telephone utilities. it was while he was with ids that he got his first taste of fund managing, when he was given responsibility for part of one of ids's larger funds. and it was as a fund manager in 1985 that he came to invesco trust co., a wholly owned subsidiary of atlanta-based invesco mim inc., which with $21 billion under management is the largest money manager in the southeast and the 15th largest in the nation. invesco mim is headed by another tech graduate, charles william brady, im '57. If you are the owner of this site: You can start editing your web site by clicking here. Forgot your zoomshare username or password? Get it here.