Vanguard is introducing new and enhanced intergenerational wealth and legacy planning capabilities through a partnership with Vanilla, an innovative provider of digital estate planning tools and solutions. The offer was successfully piloted to a small group of eligible advised clients in Vanguard Personal Advisor Wealth Management over the past year and will Continue reading →
Dear friends,
Welcome to the January issue of Mutual Fund Observer.
January was named after Janus, the tutelary deity of the year’s first month. As tutelary, he was guardian, patron, and protector. Absent from the Greek pantheon, Janus was the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. It was the “transitions” part that led Romans to place the two-faced god near entries and passageways, where he oversaw their comings and Continue reading →
I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy the holidays and spend time with family! I wish you a pleasant and prosperous new year.
I was preparing for my typical review of forecasts for the coming year and read an interesting discussion about allocation strategies on the MFO Discussion Board and redirected my efforts. The discussions centered around investment and withdrawal strategies. In this article, I will create Continue reading →
James Mackintosh, who has always been adamantly skeptical of ESG/SRI/green investing (though less loudly opposed to anti-woke/red investing, perhaps because it’s so marginal), offered a nice analysis (“Green Investors Were Crushed. Now It’s Time to Make Money,” WSJ.com, 12/5/2023) of the declining popularity of ESG investing in 2023 and the challenges facing certain green energy firms.
“Invest according to your political views,” he begins, “and you’re Continue reading →
The Standpoint Multi-Asset Fund seeks positive absolute returns through an “All-Weather strategy.” The fund holds a global equity portfolio built from regional equity ETFs. The strategy also invests, both long and short, in exchange traded futures contracts from seven sectors: equity indexes, currencies, interest rates, metals, grains, soft commodities, and energy. The managers attempt to participate in medium- to long-term trends in global futures markets and to produce a reasonable return premium in Continue reading →
My friend “W” and I have gotten into a good habit of taking an hour-long walk around the Central Park Reservoir every few months. An hour’s walk is a perfect amount of time when two people speak the same language, are willing to not pretend or live in a fantasy world, are willing to engage in a two-way honest communication, and then want to return to their lives.
W is one of the Continue reading →
The merger of the BlackRock Capital Appreciation Fund into the BlackRock Large Cap Focus Growth Fund, originally scheduled to occur by the end of 2023, has been delayed.
Several iShare ETFs, iShares Expanded Tech Sector ETF, iShares Expanded Tech- Software Sector ETF, iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF, iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF, iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF, iShares U.S. Financial Services ETF, iShares U.S. Healthcare ETF, iShares U.S. Consumer Staples ETF, iShares U.S. Transportation ETF. and iShares Semiconductor ETF will undergo a stock split. Shares of Continue reading →
Dear friends,
Welcome to December. Welcome to Winter. It’s my favorite time of the year, despite the post-Covid haze that has enveloped me all week. Augustana is increasingly festive, ringing with the sounds of holiday concerts and celebrations, as well as the definite “click” of another semester coming to its close. My students, with their hummingbird-like metabolisms, are loathe to surrender their shorts and sandals even now.
We annually share the same simple reminder. Winter has always been a dark and drear span. The weather turns against us, and we retreat inward for protection. Gardens lay frozen. Workdays are framed by darkness: dark when we arise, dark when we Continue reading →
We rolled-out our interactive Total Return Chart Tool last year, as described in Introducing MFO Charts. Recently, we integrated several new features, including enhanced styling, eliminated display restriction (previously based on youngest fund), and added a legend placement option. Here’s a Continue reading →
On November 29, 2023, T. Rowe Price launched the T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation and Income Fund (PRCFX) after the longest gestation period in fund history. Normally, there’s a lag of 70 days between a fund’s initial SEC filing and its clearance to launch. In this case, the lag is 2,590 days. The fund was organized in October 2016, filed a full prospectus in September 2017, at which point T Rowe Price bought 10,000 shares, and appeared in all of the subsequent Statements of Additional Information filed annually with the SEC.
It’s clear this has been on the adviser’s mind and Continue reading →
Missed Opportunity in Brazilian Interest Rates sowed the seeds of finding the right fund
Earlier this year, one of my friends, a doyenne of Currencies and Interest Rate trading, told me there was money to be made in Brazilian Real Local Government Bonds and interest rate products. In 2022, the Brazilian interest rate rose from 9.25% to a cycle high of 13.75%. Inflation was soaring there as in the rest of the world. A lot of traders lost money calling the highs in the rate high cycle and threw in the towel. Losses multiplied. But by the turn of the year, things were looking different. Inflation was coming down, the Central Bank had stopped raising rates in Sao Paulo and had Continue reading →
On November 13, 2023, the Boston-based institutional investment firm GMO, founded in 1977 as Grantham, Mayo, and Van Otterloo, launched their first retail product: GMO US Quality Equity ETF (QLTY). The actively managed fund will invest in a focused portfolio of “companies with established track records of historical profitability and strong fundamentals – high quality companies – are able to outgrow the average company over time and are therefore worth a premium price.” Expect a portfolio of about 40 names, with a 75% weighting in large-cap stocks and 25% in mid-caps. At 0.5%, the ETF charges the same expenses as the Continue reading →
My colleague Devesh Shah sat down with Artisan’s Michael Cirami for a long conversation. Mr. Cirami is a managing director of Artisan Partners, a portfolio manager on the EMsights Capital Group, and lead portfolio manager for the Artisan Emerging Markets Debt Opportunities, Global Unconstrained, and Emerging Markets Local Opportunities Strategies. Two of those three strategies, Debt Opportunities and Global Unconstrained, are manifested in mutual funds.
Prior to joining Artisan Partners in Continue reading →
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter – Habitat For Humanity. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica
In November, I began volunteering at the Loveland Habitat For Humanity, helping to build houses for those who might not be able to afford them without a hand up. Former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn have volunteered or worked with Habitat For Humanity since the 1980s. Housing prices have roughly doubled in the past ten years putting home ownership out of the reach of many potential buyers. I also volunteer at Neighbor To Neighbor, which helps those on the fringe of homelessness stay sheltered. Pandemic-era savings are expected to be depleted during the first half of 2024, but for many, losing work, even temporarily, can mean eviction, losing utilities, and going hungry. This puts a human perspective on financial Continue reading →
BenWP, a member of MFO’s discussion community, contributed that the Capital Group has several new equity and fixed-income ETFs. One of the newest ETFs is the Capital Group Core Balanced ETF, an active multi-asset ETF. Some of the other active equity ETFs are the Capital Group International Equity ETF, Capital Group International Focus Equity ETF, Capital Group Dividend Growers ETF, Capital Group Dividend Value ETF, Capital Group Global Growth Equity ETF, Capital Group Core Equity ETF, and Capital Group Growth ETF. The Capital Group has several new fixed-income ETFs: Capital Group Core Bond ETF, Capital Group Core Plus Income ETF, Capital Group Short Duration Income ETF, and Capital Group U.S. Multi-Sector Income ETF. There are two municipal ETFs: Capital Group Municipal Income ETF and Continue reading →
Dear friends,
Happy New Year! And oíche Shamhna shona duit!
November 1st is Samhain (pronounced “sow-in” in case you’re curious), the traditional beginning of the new year in Gaelic culture. It’s proceeded not only by Samhain Eve but also by … well, three days of drinking. And then followed by three days of regretting it, at least a little.
Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the onset of “the darker half” of the year, a time of increasing isolation and decreasing food stocks. It made all the sense in the world to do what people do in the face of adversity: throw a big communal gathering, feast, and dress up in scary costumes, and tell the agents of darkness to go Continue reading →
Devesh Shah and David Sherman engaged in a free-range conversation that touched on benchmark-free investing over hot drinks and fresh pastries. Benchmark-free investing starts with the question, “If you simply didn’t care about ‘the conventional wisdom’ concerning which assets you were supposed to own, what assets would you own?”
Mr. Sherman and Oaktree’s Howard Marks seem to endorse the same conclusion: “likely high-yield bond, surely not stocks.” That’s certainly contrary to conventional wisdom, which is centered on Continue reading →
The leaves are turning crimson and gold in Central Park. On the Upper West Side, surrounding the American Museum of Natural History, are oak trees. They line the pedestrian
walkway and are swinging to the rhythm of a light chill wind, marking the beginning of fall in New York. Acorns and dry leaves crunch under our feet. There is a farmer’s market which starts on 81st and Columbus Avenue, continues down to 77th Street, and then wraps around the museum to Central Park West. Varied hot dogs, kababs, and coffee carts line the path where the farmer’s market ends. It’s not your standard Broadway street fair with trinkets; it’s a proper market where locals get their meat and vegetable shopping done for the week. The first stand on Columbus is Continue reading →
The S&P 500 has fallen from 4,598 on July 27th of this year to 4,117 on October 28th for a decline of 10.5%, while yields on the ten-year Treasury have risen from 4.01% to 4.85% for a rise of 20.9%. The Fidelity Intermediate Treasury Bond Index (FUAMX) has had a price decline of 4% during this three-month period. I expected a larger decline in the S&P 500 and a lower rise in yields. Money market yields are hovering around 5%, and “cash is king.”
Economic growth is robust, along with relatively stable employment, while inflation Continue reading →
In the military realm, “fire and forget” designates a weapon that you don’t need to think about once it’s been launched. In investing, “fire and forget” could be used to describe several sorts of mistakes centering on our impulse to look away once we’ve made a decision. One of those mistakes is to buy a fund (presumably for a good reason), then sell it (presumably for a good reason), and then never re-examine your decision.
Managers – both corporate and fund – make mistakes. You can’t avoid it. They can’t. The best of them realize it, learn from it, correct it, and return to doing fine work. After inheriting Continue reading →
