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when picking a mutual fund (or any investment for that matter) you don't really want to make your decisions based on past performance. you can't buy history - the conditions that created those returns are unlikely to ever occur again. what you can buy is a management philosophy and system.
if you know the stated philosophy of a money manager (from the prospectus), then you can look back at the 3/5/10/20 year numbers and see if that philosophy and investment style have returned fairly consistant positive numbers.
often people are mislead by strictly looking at recent history. it is very easy to have great historical numbers over a less than 3 year number - it only takes one really hot (lucky) year to do it. you want to look for consistancy and stability.
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Getting knocked down is no sin, it's not getting back up that's the sin
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