The concept was virtually unheard of at the time: the mutual fund industry was young, and most funds carried 8.5% loads or sales charges, and were sold by brokers. Only a few dozen noload funds were available and it was almost impossible to obtain useful performance data on them.
Using a spreadsheet and an adding machine, Burt began calculating the returns for all the available noload funds, arranging the data in a tabulated worksheet. He compared funds with similar risk or volatility, and invested in the best performers. He continually tracked performance. When a fund began to lag its peers, he redeemed the shares and directed the proceeds to a better performing alternative.
Janet Brown joined Burt in 1978. She defined the system by developing the Fund*X Score to rank funds by near-term performance, and quantified the risk-classification system still in use today. Over time, the investment strategy known as Upgrading took shape. Burt’s tabulated worksheet became the newsletter NoLoad FundX, and investing with noload mutual funds ultimately became commonplace. In the 1990s, other investment professionals joined Finance Fund Store, and the firm expanded to answer the needs of a growing roster of clients.