You've got to love that Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Year after year, it just keeps going up, and up, and up. If you'd invested $10,000 in an index fund back at the beginning of 1993, when SmartMoney was only two issues old, you could cash out right now with roughly $23,600 after taxes. Can't beat that.

Or can you?

Let's say that every year you invested only in the industries that looked most promising for the next 12 months. How much of a difference would that make? Well, naturally it would all depend on which sectors you chose as "most promising." But just for the sake of argument, let's say you'd selected the sector funds that SmartMoney has highlighted each January in our annual "Best Investments" issue.

The result? That $10,000 invested back in 1993 would be worth nearly $29,500 after taxes today. In other words, you'd have almost $6,000 more.

It's precisely that kind of boost -- a little turbo power for your portfolio, you might say -- that we're looking for with the following "Best Funds for 1998." We're not suggesting you take all of your money and put it in these funds. We continue to believe that the best course is to choose good investments and hold them for the long term -- not bounce in and out of stocks or funds in a misguided effort to time the market. Yet we also know that most investors have new money coming into their portfolio all the time, and it needs to be invested somewhere. Why not use some of that cash to capitalize on trends within the market as they occur, even if it's just with a fraction of your portfolio?