January 2013 proved to be a good month for the Carbon County retirement fund.

During the county retirement board meeting on Thursday, Robert Crampsie, secretary of the board and the county controller, announced that the retirement fund portfolio value as of Jan. 31 was $63,368,989."January proved to be an excellent month performance wise," Crampsie said, noting that the fund is up nearly $2 million from the end of 2012. "We're off to a really great start."The board then discussed last month's presentation by Michael Shone, president of Peirce Park Group Investment Management Consultants of West Chester.Shone provided a number of recommendations that his company felt would benefit the future of the county retirement funds. They included rebalancing the portfolio, hiring a new small mid-cap manager and looking into hiring a global manager.The board agreed and voted to rebalance the portfolio and look for a new small mid-cap manager; and said they would be in favor of obtaining more information from a company regarding their global management. A global manager has the flexibility to move between international and domestic markets in a portfolio.