“Don’t trust everything you see. Even salt looks like sugar.” ― Anonymous

The MFO Premium site now has fund holdings; specifically, top-ten holdings for equities and fixed-income securities, countries, and main industry sectors … thanks to our expanded Lipper (now Refinitiv) Global Data Feed.

What’s more, all are searchable with the site’s main tool MultiSearch. Here’s a screenshot of the new holdings metrics on the search page:

How many funds own Berkshire Hathaway as a top ten? 492. A lot!

The company is itself a top-ten U.S. large cap. There are 163 large cap index funds, which means most of the owners are “active” managers. Of these, American Funds Balanced (ABALX) and Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX) are the two largest.

One fund, Check Capital’s Blue Chip Investor (BCIFX), has more than a third of its holdings in BRK.A, or 34.2%. It charges investors 1.16% per year. (I have a good idea on how investors in the fund could reduce their expense ratio by 40 basis points … a year!)

Speaking of Berkshire Hathaway, how many funds have Apple (AAPL) as a top position? 1219, including 869 active (non-index) funds.

One last: How many funds own Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google)?  869, including 530 active funds. Here are the lifetime risk and return summary metrics for the largest five, with T Rowe Price’s Blue Chip Growth (TRBCX) in top spot:

This new feature in MultiSearch now makes it pretty easy to look for holdings overlap in the broad swath of fund offerings today … more than 12,000!

Similarly, we’ve also added several new purchase and portfolio metrics, at the request of subscribers, including growth, capital gains, and quality. Here’s a summary of portfolio metrics now available in MultiSearch, nearly all searchable:

• Managed Volatility – Employs strategy to mitigate volatility, including but not limited to risk parity, minimum volatility and fundamental.
• Cash – Cash portfolio asset allocation.
• Equity – Equity portfolio asset allocation.
• Bond – Bond or fixed income portfolio asset allocation
• No. of Holdings – Number of holdings in portfolio.
• Holdings Weight – Weight of top ten holdings, based on portfolio value, %.
• Turnover – Fund assets that were sold during the most recent fiscal year.
• Cap Avg – Dollar-weighted average market capitalization of equities within the portfolio.
• P/B – Latest price-to-book value of equities within the portfolio, per share, dollar-weighted average.
• P/E – Latest price-to-earnings of equities within the portfolio, per share, dollar-weighted average, trailing 12 mo.
• P/S – Latest price-to-sales ratio of equities within the portfolio, per share, dollar-weighted average, trailing 12 mo.
• P/C – Latest price-to-cash flow ratio of equities within the portfolio, per share, dollar-weighted average, trailing 12 mo.
• D/E – Total debt to total market capitalization ratio of equities within the portfolio, latest quarter, dollar-weighted average.
• ROA – Average annual return on assets [ROA, net income divided by total assets] of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• ROC – Average annual return on capital [ROC, earnings before interest and taxes divided by capital employed plus short-term loans minus intangible assets] of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• ROE – Average annual return on equity [ROE, net income divided by common stockholder equity] of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• ROI – Average annual return on investment [ROI, income after taxes divided by the average total long-term debt and other liabilities and shareholder’s equity] of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• Cash Growth – Compound annual growth of total cash flow growth from operations of equities in portfolio over past three years , dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• EPS Growth – Compound annual growth of earning per share [EPS] of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• Sales Growth – Compound annual sales growth of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• Sales/Share Growth – Compound annual sales per share (SPS) growth of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• Dividend Growth – Compound annual dividend per share (DPS) growth of equities in portfolio over past three years, dollar-weighted average, %/yr.
• Yield – Dividend payout over past 12 months.
• Dividend Frequency – Frequency of fund dividend distribution.
• Dividend Payout Ratio – Dividends paid to earnings made of equities in portfolio, dollar-weighted average, trailing 12 mo, %.
• Effective Maturity – Dollar-weighted measure of maturity of bonds in portfolio, calculated to first call or effective life.
• Quality – Relative credit quality of bonds in portfolio, based on dollar-weighted average.

Another new feature is the ability to screen for Multi-Year Ratings, which now makes it convenient to apply the criteria discussed in last month’s post: “MFO Premium’s Best Fund of the Decade.” Here’s a screenshot of the new selection criteria:

One final upgrade worth calling attention to: Ferguson Ratings! We first exposed readers to terms like “Outperformance Measure” and “Consistency Index” in last year’s piece, entitled “Introducing Ferguson Metrics.”  Adding ratings now enables users to search for top (or other) quintile Ferguson metrics.

These metrics can be combined with the nearly 100 other metrics in the screener to develop some pretty compelling candidate fund lists. For example, there are 68 mutual funds that have combined 3, 5, and 10-year top quintile performance for both Ferguson’s outperformance ansd consistency metrics, plus absolute return, risk adjusted return, and rolling average return.

I’ll coin them: Ferguson MFO Premium Select Funds. (Thank you Brad!) Here are the top five performers this past decade, based on absolute return, which includes Akre Focus Retail (AKREX):

Please enjoy these new data and search features.