Sequoia Fund reopens

The Sequoia Fund, after experiencing selling by investors, is reopening its doors May 1 to new investors for the first time since 1982.

The $3.5 billion value fund is celebrated for outperforming the broader market during much of its 38-year history. For years, it was run by legendary stock picker William Ruane, who followed the same approach as Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett.

In recent years, however, Sequoia has a mixed performance record, lagging the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index in three of the past five calendar years.

Selling by investors caused assets to fall to a level lower than it was a decade ago, the funds' managers wrote in a report for the quarter ending March 31. If that were to continue at that rate, it could "cause us to have to sell stocks that we didn't want to," said co-manager Robert Goldfarb, 63 years old, in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Since its inception in 1970, Sequoia has returned more than three times that of the S&P 500. An investor who put $1,000 into the fund at inception would today have a little more than $200,000, compared to about $63,000 in an S&P 500 fund, according to Morningstar Inc.