“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent,

intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Our big MFO Premium upgrade, as described in last month’s commentary, went live on 9 November. Most obvious are the expanded evaluation periods, which include year-to-date (YTD) and latest month performance metrics. In the days ahead, subscribers will see many new parameters from our expanded database, as was evidenced today with the rolled-out of an Interval Funds screening flag in the MultiSearch tool.

The folks at Gaia Capital requested we add the screen for this new type of mutual fund. Per Lipper, Interval Funds are a hybrid mutual fund structure that falls between an open-end and a closed-end fund. They allow investors to purchase shares daily, but permit funds to set longer intervals between redemptions. (See Morningstar’s article “Are Interval Funds the Next Big Thing?”)

As of month ending October, there are 44 such funds in our database. The top 10 by assets under management (AUM) are listed below in a table of YTD performance, which has been strong generally, as evidenced by the five Great Owl funds. Even stronger performance can be found in some of the smaller interval funds, like FS Global Credit Opportunities Fund-D (BX) and Legg Mason’s Western Asset Middle Market Income (XWMFX).

In a follow-up to David’s “Who Won In October?” piece, the new past month evaluation screen allows us to easily see exactly who won and lost in October. The table below, for example, presents the worst five performing US Equity funds, showing drops of 16, 18, and 23%, including the closed stalwart Brown Capital Management Small Company (BCSIX). Ouch!

That said, analyzing period returns (via the Analyze button) for these same five funds reaffirms David’s reluctance to whine too much over October’s pullback, as most still offer healthy gains YTD and over the past year, as evidenced here:

The trend though is clearly negative, or as being tweeted about lately, “Momentum is broken.”

Meanwhile, Emerging Markets, China, India are among the worst performing categories this year, continuing 9 months of drawdown, much worse the S&P 500 despite the rough October …

And reversing last year’s short lived come-back …

As we continue to roll-out our much expanded database from Lipper’s Global Data Feed, there’s never been a better time to take advantage of the MFO Premium site.