The bear market is hitting the mutual fund industry hard, with few '40 Act managers managing to increase their assets in 2008. In his USA Today column, John Waggoner cites Pimco and ProFunds as two of the few fund families to their AUM this year. (Pimco's assets are up three percent year-to-date to $220.3 billion and ProFunds' assets are up 120 percent to $23 billion.)

The only hints Waggoner provides as to the two firms' stand-out asset levels this year is that Pimco specializes in bonds and ProFunds offers lots of inverse index funds.

Waggoner also notes that the market downturn has left Fidelity Cash Reserves as the largest mutual fund (with $130.7 billion) and Vanguard as the biggest mutual fund firm (with $1.11 trillion, versus $1.10 trillion for Fidelity and $806.7 billion for American Funds, according to Lipper). 

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