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A GOOD LARGE-CAP FUND can be the cornerstone of an investor's portfolio. These gentle giants — which are chock full of well-established companies — are less volatile than funds that focus on the small- or mid-cap arenas.

Not all large-cap funds are built alike, of course. Those with a penchant for growth stocks are likely to have more volatile returns than those with a value bent. A "core" fund, on the other hand, invests in both types of stocks.

We've structured this screen to seek out funds with 10-year annualized returns in the upper 25% of their respective Lipper classifications. (That means large-cap growth funds are rated against other large-cap growth funds, and so on.) By using a longer investment horizon, we can be sure that these funds have performed well in bull and bear markets.

Next we put Lipper's Preservation score to work. This score compares funds with their peers in three broad groups — equity, mixed equity and fixed-income. (That means an equity fund would be compared with other equity funds, and the same for hybrid and fixed-income funds.) Funds that score high in terms of Preservation tend to avoid losses, and therefore preserve capital. In order to find these funds, we requested Preservation scores of 3 or lower; 1 is the highest score, denoting a Lipper Leader.

Low fees were also a requirement. Large-cap funds are generally less expensive than small- and mid-cap funds, but investors should still keep an eye on costs. ("Cost Control" is a good way to learn more about fund-related fees.) We demanded no-load funds with expense ratios that landed in the bottom 50% of the fund's classification.

Running this screen should be just your first step in finding the right fund for you. With your list of options in hand, you should gather more information by using the SmartMoney.com fund snapshots. Some of the more important features to analyze are a fund's top-10 holdings, sector weightings and calendar-year returns. Once you've done those things, be sure to visit the fund family's Web site to take a look at a fund's prospectus and it's most recent quarterly and annual reports.