Just to confirm: the new Gross fund is Unconstrained Bond, not "Global Unconstrained Bond." The Unconstrained Bond fund prospectus contains only one limit on the income-producing securities in which it might invest: no more than 50% of the portfolio may be invested in emerging markets. It is, otherwise, unconstrained and lists loans, international bonds, preferred stock, dividend paying common stock, money markets, junk bonds, derivatives and zero-coupons among its options.
Gross will lead a new Global Macro division of Janus headquartered in Newport Beach CA, just over a thousand miles distant from the Mile High investment headquarters.
More soon,
David

JUCAX the Class A version of the Janus Unconstrained Bond Fund (Inception: May 2014) carries a 4.75% front load. Can't imagine a typical small investor paying such a load today for any bond fund. There are however several other share classes (likely for institutions, large investors, and retirement plans) that do not carry a load.

@hank: I'm shocked ! It looks like the king is dead, long live the king. JNS up 39% in pre-market.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-bond-kings-reign-really-over-2014-09-25/print

What an awful day overall.
And, IMHO, on no real news.
No event occurred that has not already been with us.
Just, lack of data. And this ubiquitous (if unfounded) fear that the market is over-heated...that a drawdown is past due.
As if it's been too good for the past 5 or so years, so...time to retract.
The fact that returns in SP500 over past 10-15 years have been abysmal appears to be forgotten fact in the current clamor that the market is over-extended.
Be it the CAPE crusaders. The prognosticates of D3...deficits, debt and demographics. Or, those convinced another 50% drop is right around the corner...just because.
Is it that we must pay for sins of our fathers...excessive returns of the 1980-90s?
Again, apologies...just my humble opinion.
Honestly, earnings season can't come fast enough for me.
Perhaps then, the market will get back to movements based on data.
c

http://wealthtrack.com/
"His largest holding is insurer AIG (AIG), which makes up about half of the fund’s portfolio. His second largest position is Bank of America (BAC) at 14.5%. Next are the two so called government sponsored entities, GSE’s known as Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), which he started purchasing over the past year. Combined they add up to 15% of the portfolio."
"He’ll explain why nearly 80% of his portfolio is in four financial stocks shunned by most investors."
"If you are unable to join us for the show on television, you can watch it on our website, WealthTrack.com, starting over the weekend. If you’d like to see it earlier, it is available to our PREMIUM subscribers right now. We also have an EXTRA interview with Berkowitz about a new venture he is undertaking in Miami, exclusively on our website."
+++++++++++
He also has 6.97% in Sears (SHLD), and 6.35% in St. Joe (JOE)
That's the bulk of the portfolio.

Or...maybe not.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-25/sears-investor-fairholme-says-st-joe-won-t-participate-in-loan.html?cmpid=yhoo
"The St. Joe Co. was unable to agree on terms for such a participation in light of its investment criteria and has declined the opportunity to participate,” Fairholme said today in a filing."
Edited to Add:
Berkowitz selling shares:
Sep 25, 2014 BERKOWITZ BRUCE R
Beneficial Owner (10% or more)
15,900 Indirect Sale at $26.05 per share. 414,195
Sep 24, 2014 BERKOWITZ BRUCE R
Beneficial Owner (10% or more)
10,500 Indirect Sale at $26.40 per share. 277,200
My question is: is this Berkowitz selling personal shares (It would appear so?) If so, is he selling before the mutual fund is....?

Somewhere I have an article by an academic (ugh!) that of all the indicators out there for the equity market, the best is the junk bond market. I have never been real enamored of that one as my introduction to junk bonds was in January 1991. Back then equities were coming out of a 3 month mini-bear market and *led* the junk bond market out of one its worst bear markets on record. However, in 2008, that historic bear market in junk ended in mid-December 2008 while equities didn't bottom until early March 2009. So back then junk indeed was the leader. This time around, the average junk bond open end fund and the junk bond ETF topped in late June/early July. There was much made back then about how the small time investors had panicked while the smart money swooped in and picked up the pieces. The smart money (never met them in over 45 years at this game) is not looking real smart right now as junk is getting ready to take out its recent lows. And in the chart below of one of the junk ETFs ( a really ugly chart) that low has already been taken out.
Note: My comments are meant as philosophical entertainment only. I have found my opinions and the opinions of any other talking heads are pretty worthless when it comes to accumulating wealth. No one, absolutely no one can predict or forecast with any consistent accuracy in the short run. That's why I listen only to the action of the market itself and adjust my positions accordingly. I would hate to think where I would be had I listened to my own opinions or the opinions of others over the years.
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=hyld&insttype=&freq=&show=

FYI: Emerging-market stock mutual funds are clear performance winners over the broad stock market in the past 15 years.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg0OTcxMTg=
Enlarged Graphic: http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WEBlv0923_1K.gif&docId=718527&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1152&caption=&id=718464

FYI: Small-cap core mutual funds, which invest in both growth and value stocks, have outperformed their midcap and large-cap peers in the past 15 years.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg0OTcxMTE=
Core Fund Over Past 15 Years Enmlarged Graphic;
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WEBlv092514.gif&docId=718916&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1152&caption=&id=718914

PIMCO can't see the neutral policy rate at 4% either.
They have their "new neutral" at 2%.
Of course, the FOMC members do think the neutral policy rate will be at 3.75%, according to their "dot plot"
We shall see.

A few highlights:
The management seems sensitive to lackluster performance of Acorn funds and treated us as adults, explaining in depth more of their approach.
A few snippets:
1. ACRNX performance seems partly joined at the hip to M&A activity. More of its holdings became takeover targets this year (repeatedly referred to as "takeout," which sent the aging audience into 10-minute revery on Peking duck) than in previous 18 months; portfolio managers very excited about that.
2. In their purchased-equity field, companies with low PE and poor earnings or negative earnings did slightly better than others over past investment year (begins midyear, maybe), but their GARP philosophy led them to purchase slightly higher up the PE and earnings ladders, generally, and not to overweight the lower end. The fund, ACRNX, still benefited from bounces at the low end. (The differences were very slight, such as 25% and 26%, not 10% and 60% -- in terms of buying low PE + neg or small earnings versus higher up the ladder.)
3. Company philosophy is to ignore macroeconomic events (at least as decision drivers).
Answers to audience Qs:
1. Where to put $10k? Ask a registered investment adviser.
2. Long bull market run: going to cash? No. Mngt does not time cash. It is up to investors to sell their own holdings and go to cash. (Per M*, ACRNX, ACINX, and CEFZX all hold zero cash.)
3. Doing what else? Harder to find great cos. with no problems. So portfolio managers are looking for companies with good business model and some problems that co. mngt might be able to turn around in short- to mid-term (within 5 years).
Cookies; wraps, with and without meat or cheese; coffee, soft drinks, iced tea. Free coffee mug.

@LLJB: The way the Jack White brokerage did it was interesting. You put your name on a list at Jack White, telling them what funds you wanted to purchase and how much.
They took care of the rest. This worked great to buy load funds without paying the load, and to get into mutual funds that were closed.
Let's say you wanted to buy a fund with a 5.75% load, but you didn't want to pay the load. The brokerage would contact you when they had a seller. Your only contact was with the brokerage firm. They would charge you a flat fee, and give the seller half of it. You could purchase as much of the fund as was being sold for the flat fee.
I also got into two closed funds privately, by finding someone online who was willing to sell me shares of the fund! It was surprisingly easy. Two perfect strangers sold me shares of two different closed mutual funds, both highly regarded funds. I'm still in both of those funds today, as well as the load funds and closed funds I got into thru Jack White.

Not following. If you rightclick in this page, do you not get a Print option (all funds are showing)?
http://quote.morningstar.com/fund-filing/SAI/2014/4/30/t.aspx?t=MAFSX&ft=485BPOS&d=7fba07bce523a6afe29eba92eb16cbfb

FT: Pimco, WisdomTree join Schwab’s ETF platform
By Jackie Noblett Sep 23, 2014
Quote from Jackie Noblett's FT article:
Schwab charges ETF sponsors a fixed yearly fee of up to $250,000 to participate in the OneSource platform ...
Sponsors also pay an asset-based fee based ...once it has been added to the platform. Those fees can range up to 0.15 per cent annually.
Here is link to search for complete article:
https://www.google.com/#q="Pimco,+WisdomTree+join+Schwab’s+ETF+platform"

Kyle Bass (sitting in as special guest) on CNBC this AM: "I can't imagine a Fed funds rate at 4%."
Edited to add:
The Chicago Fed's Charles Evans doesn't disappoint his dovish fans urging the FOMC to "err on the side of patience in removing highly accommodative monetary policy," and not to worry about an inflation rate moderately exceeding the 2% target for a limited time."I am very uncomfortable with calls to raise our policy rate sooner than later. I favor delaying liftoff until I am more certain that we have sufficient momentum in place toward our policy goals."
lol.
http://seekingalpha.com/news/1999685-evans-fed-needs-to-be-extraordinarily-patient-on-rate-hikes

As discussed previously for GPROX, exceptions include (direct shareholders only):
1. Retirement accounts
2. Education savings accounts
3. Minor accounts (UTMA, UGMA)
4. Accounts with AIP established prior to closing
Statement from fund:
http://www.grandeurpeakglobal.com/documents/pdfs/grandeurpeakglobal-pr-20140905.pdf

"Global Microcap, the micro-cap subset of Global Reach"
Hmmm.....Global Reach only has a market cap average of 718 million.
Sounds like a micro-cap subset will probably have a market cap of 200-300 million

I'm not sure why number matters? I was more wondering if "wide moat" approximates quality?

jlev, I think you may be right, and "wide moat" probably is a decent approximation of quality.
The reason why the number of stocks matters:
Let's say you are asking how small caps have done YTD. You would look at the entire Russell 2000 index, all 2000 stocks. You wouldn't look at an actively managed fund of 20 carefully selected small cap stocks.
If you were asking how the stock market has done YTD, or last year, or whatever: you would look at a Total Stock Market Index fund like VTI, or some people would look at the full S&P 500 index. But you wouldn't base it on how an actively managed fund of 20 or 30 carefully selected stocks did.
Same with the question of how is "quality" doing this year. If you look at a fund whose job is to pick the 20 most undervalued wide moat stocks, you are getting more information about how that specific fund did, rather than the entire universe of "quality" stocks.
Another example is that a lot of people think the Dow 30 is "the stock market", but it's only 30 stocks, even though it is chosen to be representative of the stock market as a whole. But there's over 3600 stocks in the U.S. total stock mkt index, so there's no way any 30 stocks can be representative. The Dow 30 is up 4.5% YTD, but the S&P 500 is up 8.85% YTD.

The big picture at Grandeur Peak (from our August 2013 issue)
In the course of launching their new Global Reach fund, profiled below, Grandeur Peak decided to share a bit of their firm’s long-term planning with the public. Grandeur Peak’s investment focus is small- to micro-cap stocks. The firm estimates that they will be able to manage about $3 billion in assets before their size becomes an impediment to their performance. From that estimate, they backed out the point at which they might need to soft close their products in order to allow room for capital growth (about $2 billion) and then allocated resource levels for each of their seven envisioned strategies.
Those strategies are:

• Global Reach, their 300-500 stock flagship fund
  
• Global Opportunities, a more concentrated version of Global Reach
  
• International Opportunities, the non-U.S. sub-set of Global Reach
  
• Emerging Markets Opportunities, the emerging and frontier markets subset of International Opportunities
  
• US Opportunities, the U.S.-only subset of Global Opportunities
  
• Global Value, the “Fallen Angels” sub-set of Global Reach
  
• Global Microcap, the micro-cap subset of Global Reach

President Eric Huefner remarks that “Remaining nimble is critical for a small/micro cap manager to be world-class,” hence “we are terribly passionate about asset capping across the firm.” With two strategies already closed and another gaining traction, it might be prudent to look into the opportunity.

Some news of interest to many at MFO: