Using a Morningstar screen, we created a list of the 42 technology mutual funds. Next, we selected only funds with Morningstar neutral to gold ratings and three to five star fund ratings.

There were a multitude of share classes with many levying 12b-1 fees and front end loads or commissions. We considered only no load funds.

That reduced our list to 28 technology mutual funds. Included on the list were broad tech funds and a few funds focused on narrow industry segments such as semiconductors or information systems.

We considered funds holding U.S. stocks as well as those with companies based outside the U.S., and we looked for funds that outperformed their Morningstar category.

Since there weren’t enough funds that met all of our criteria and that are also accessible directly by individual investors, we also included funds available through advisors and certain brokerages or company sponsored retirement plans as well.

You can typically still access a fund on your own by investing via, say, A-class shares, which may cost more and whose returns are fractionally lower than Advisor-class shares.

Our final list of 10 mutual funds includes those that charge fees that are around average or are below average. They also boast category-beating performance. The majority can be bought by individuals, and many of the Fidelity funds can be purchased at Fidelity.com without transaction fees.

The editor owned shares of the Fidelity Select Semiconductors Portfolio when this article was published. He held no positions in the other securities discussed in the post at the original time of publication.