Howdy @Ted
Accounts are being consolidated here.
With a remaining conviction that real estate will maintain forward momentum, as long as interest rates don't become upward crazy too fast or some other strange event; the next likely candidate for shuffling real estate holdings would be directed at FSRVX.
This would maintain our 50% portfolio in equity to about the following mix for total equity portfolio:
--- 50% broadbased U.S., VTI (mostly larger cap)
--- 35% healthcare, split between PRHSX and FSPHX
--- 15% real estate, DPRRX and BIREX (access to these 2 will be lost with consolidation)
DPRRX is too expensive to own anyway.
Hey, stay warm and careful, man. Will be even more brutal in Michigan tonight and Sunday. We've had just 3 more inches of snow, but the wind gusts are +25mph and going higher are causing many roads to become drifting/crap again. Wind chills for tonight reported to be -30 and lower. I know it is nasty in your area, too.
Glad to be a positive side investor, so that the market place profits will pay the heat bill. :)
Take care, and thank you for your thoughts with this.
Regards,
Catch

Edmond said: "AU is not an investment ... Its insurance."
I like that. But instead of "insurance", I'd call it a hedging tool used by money managers to hedge other risk positions. Than again, "insuring" against various unforeseen events that could trash most paper assets is, I guess, a type of hedging.
I think charting the highest performing asset over 100 or 500 years and than promoting that single asset to the exclusion of all others constitutes a gross oversimplification of the investment process. If that's all there is to investing, let's say "Good Bye" to bonds, real estate, cash, precious metals, fine art, collectables, and an assortment of other alternative assets that help carry us through those periods when equities fall flat on their face.
Mr. Siegel wrote a book. "Stocks for the long run" - or something like that. Wonder how well that would have sold in 1929 or 2008?

@Ted
Yes, FRIFX is a tame one in the real estate arena. Hell, it is listed as a 3 alarm fire fund here in Charles' list; because it is matched against pure real estate equity funds.
M* does not have a category for this type of fund; so it shows up at the bottom of the list and always will.
As noted, the fund is usually 1/2 bonds. I don't know of any other funds in this sector with a similar function.
But, the annualized 5 year return is 11%, so no bitch'in from this house for this part of the mix.
For the time being, we'll keep it packed in with other RE, healthcare and broadbased U.S. equity.

@ FREDX doesn't yield quite that of FRIFX; however when it comes to performance it's far superior. FRIFX YTD-10 yrs. has ranked in the 85-98% percentile which qualifies it as a turkey.
Regards,
Ted

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1482208/000119312515050373/d873869d497.htm
497 1 d873869d497.htm SALIENT ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES I FUND
Salient Alternative Strategies I Fund
Salient Alternative Strategies Master Fund
Supplement Dated February 13, 2015
to the Prospectus Dated April 30, 2014
Liquidation of the Salient Alternative Strategies I Fund and the
Salient Alternative Strategies Master Fund
The Board of Trustees of Salient Alternative Strategies I Fund (the “Fund”) and Salient Alternative Strategies Master Fund (the “Master Fund” and, together with the Fund, the “Funds”) has approved the closure and commencement of liquidation of the Funds, whereby the Funds will cease their investment operations and commence liquidation of their assets. Liquidation of each of the Funds will commence on approximately February 13, 2015, and, in light of the Funds’ portfolio holdings, the Funds currently anticipate that the liquidation process will take approximately one year to complete.
Effective immediately, the Fund will no longer offer or sell shares to new investors or existing shareholders (except through reinvested dividends if any), and the Funds will no longer conduct repurchase offers.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT WITH THE PROSPECTUS FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

One of our real estate holdings for the past several years is FRIFX. It is an odd duck fund for the other RE in its category; as it averages about 50/50 equity and bond mix.
The fund turnover runs about 30; among 570 or so holdings as of the most recent report period.
Fido summury view of this fund
For turnover rate/ratio with a fund; the understood measure method covers a 12 month period. According to statistics, the average managed mutual fund turnover is 85%.
A turnover event "count" occurs when a stock is sold before being held for 1 year. I will presume, without further investigation; that a turnover count does not happen if the stock is sold at a holding period of 1 year and 1 day from purchase date.
Obviously, turnover, as a ratio; is also affected by the number of holdings in a fund.
I/we at our house; are not concerned with turnover numbers.......if the fund functions in a manner as we anticipated and/or understood to begin; and continues in a positve direction.
Regards,
Catch

Hi guys!
I have a list. The criteria are: must play on Fidelity platform, NOT be closed, and reasonable E.R. Also, must be buying companies of less than $1 billion net worth. I have FSCRX. They do $2.4 billion, so I want smaller ones. WEMMX - I always liked Mario. He's a good stock picker. I think someone else on here said that also. His companies are $500 million on average.....it shows. He holds lots of cash (25%)....these are old numbers though. I'll give Mario one thing---he likes to hold a lot of companies. BMMYX - very small size-wise, and the managers can't find much of a track record. And for being so small, they seem to have a lot of holdings, a lot of healthcare....with bio in there. It worries me some. Any comments on this fund would be appreciated. WTMIX - small fund size....lots of holdings....financial and healthcare are the two biggest parts. I'm not a big fan of Westcore for the most part. This fund holds really small stuff. After looking it over, I must say I like this fund. Any comments would be appreciated. The managers haven't done much more than than this fund. FAMFX - $65 million, only 29 holdings. I like that. I want your best ideas. With so little money to use, it's like, "Show me what you got!" I really, really like this fund. What say you? Next to MAMO, I like this. I know it's new. Please let me know if I missed any......
God bless!
the Pudd

A long-term owner of gold here. I think the question asked is wrong.
AU is not an investment -- good or bad. Its insurance. What is the rate of return on homeowner's insurance to someone who never files a claim? (hint: its a negative number, as cash only goes out, and does not come) Does that make homeowner's insurance something to be avoided? In a precise sense, purchasing insurance is not "investing", its an outlay, an expense. In return for the outlay, you are obtain protection for an asset.
AU is similar. You decide on an appropriate allocation, you incur an outlay. The difference being, with AU (unlike homeowner's insurance) after several years of holding it, you can decide to liquidate it and get (some portion of) your money back. Try doing that with your H/O insurance premiums....
As to dryflower's comment about a miniscule ROR on AU over 'thousands of years'... First, my investment horizon is not that long. Second, directly to D/F's point, if you were WERE sitting (for example) in pharoanic Egypt circa 1500 B.C., or 200 B.C Carthage, and invested in loans to the pharoah (i.e. Treasurys), fertile farm acreage and tenement apartments (real estate) , or the local camel merchant (equity ownership in commercial enterprises, i.e. 'stocks') ...then here come the Romans, they kill the camels, topple the govt, set fire to your buildings (real estate) and seize the lands (or in Carthage's case, 'seed' the land with salt to make it unusable).
What is the ROR on THOSE investments once title has been seized or property destroyed? (hint, if your equity in an asset goes to $0, its gone, forever.)
The camel merchant who sold his camels the day before the Romans landed, could easily hide the proceeds from that sale (gold coins), throw them a bags, walk them out into the desert somewhere, bury them by night (perhaps in sundry locations, to thwart burglars, and come back in a year or two, and his AU and wealth intact. Still not impressed? Fair enough, but what is the ROR (or current value) on an IOU from the last, deposed sovereign of Carthage? --- 10 years before he was deposed, all Carthaginians assumed the sovereign's IOU was AAA-rated...
The above story is tongue-in-cheek, but meant to get the point across about AU being insurance, not an investment. AU, because of its inherent attributes (universally desirable -- among all cultures past and present, relative scarceness, indestructability, portability) makes it a unique diversifier against the potential ravagings of conventional investment assets, WTSHTF.
We all may lucky enough to NOT experience a "Mega Black Swan" event. And our houses may never burn down. [I also have stocks, and bonds (in far greater value than my AU -- so please don't consider me a 'gold bug', any more than I am a 'stock bug' or a 'bond bug'. ]
Like Henry Walton Jones Jr, I am "a cautious fellow". I renew my H/O insurance each year and I hold some AU. I consider neither to be "investments"; I consider having some of both prudent.

FYI: A GMO white paper offers a novel explanation as to what drives manager underperformance.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/02/13/why-active-managers-fail-and-why-you-shouldnt-fire?t=mutual-funds&page_all=1

@rjb112
(1) Since you are familiar with Siegel's book, do you have any reason why a supposedly scholarly undertaking like this fails to identify on its central chart which T-Bill maturity the plot-line reflects? The difference would be small. But I'd have more confidence in his numbers if I knew the methodology employed to reach them.
(2) I think we agree that gold is not an attractive long term investment.
(3) I think we also agree that over shorter periods (such as the referenced 15 year time-span) gold does sometimes perform quite well when compared against some other investments.
I'm not sure we disagree on anything of substance here.

hank, I don't know the answer to your question in (1). I strongly suspect the answer to which Treasury Bills were used will be found in Chapter 5, where he says, "In Chapter 5 we examine the details of these return series and see how they are constructed."
I don't have the time nor inclination to read that chapter. I don't own the book, but have it available thru the public library e-book series.
I agree with you when you say "The difference would be small." Since he refers to short term bonds as having the 2.7% annualized real return, he is equating the Treasury Bills he used for the chart to short term bonds. Perhaps he used one year T-bills? I have no idea, and agree with you that it would be much better to have that stated outright. I would also like to see the bonds identified....such as 30-year Treasury bonds, and even the stocks identified. That's where I'm guessing Chapter 5 comes into play.
I agree with your (2) and (3) above........certainly over the past 210 years, gold has been a terrible investment, but also, nobody has lived 210 years to hold it that long and achieve that terrible return. So if you bought gold in January of 2001 and sold it in 2011, you did fabulously. If you bought gold in 1980 at over $800/ounce and sold it in 2000 or 2001 at under $300/ounce, you did terribly.
All these things, including small cap value stocks, large cap growth, value stocks versus growth stocks, foreign stocks vs. US stocks, emerging market stocks, etc etc......are quite time period dependent. Large cap growth did great from 1995-2000, then did terrible, while small cap value did great starting 2000.........
Actually, I don't think we disagree on anything here.
And I'm not against gold.
Some of my favorite investors have invested in gold, such as Jean Marie Eveillard, the late Peter Bernstein, William (Bill) Bernstein, and others. I think Buffett may have even invested in gold or silver at one time. And John Templeton I'm pretty sure bought silver at one time.
And you don't have to look at gold as something you invest in to hit a home run with respect to total return. Many invest in it as an insurance policy against bad outcomes.
take care

@rjb112
I do not wish to read Mr. Siegel's book. However, I'd consider it condescending for anyone to suggest that, not having read the book, I'm unfit to offer some constructive comments on the question under discussion.
(1) Since you are familiar with Siegel's book, do you have any reason why a supposedly scholarly undertaking like this fails to identify on its central chart which T-Bill maturity the plot-line reflects? The difference would be small. But I'd have more confidence in his numbers if I knew the methodology employed to reach them.
(2) I think we agree that gold is not an attractive long term investment.
(3) I think we also agree that over shorter periods (such as the referenced 15 year time-span) gold does sometimes perform quite well against some other investments.
I'm not sure we disagree on anything of substance here. I do feel the chart as presented exhibits sloppy scholarship for its omission of which T-Bill maturity was used in the calculation, But, that's my subjective judgment. Others can form their own opinion.

Hmm. The fund in question is one I own. ARYVX. It has done very well but looking at it recently I noticed it had 275% turnover. Maybe this was a one year thing? That is why I wondered where I could get previous years turnover rates.

Howdy campers,
Wow. Interesting discussion.
I see gold pretty much the way I always have - as a security blanket. Hell, I didn't even play gold before 2002 . . . and I have collected coins for over 50 years AND played silver since the Hunt Bros. It wasn't fun, nor profitable. However, when the bull woke up back in 2001/2002, it was the kinghellbastard momentum play. Geez, it was just back up the truck and roll back in a multi-orgasmic state if bliss. Hopefully, some of you played along.
That said, when the music's over, it's over. The outsized profits in the pm's are long past. That's OK. Eventually, they'll come again . . . but it may be 50 years.
I guess I'll stay with what I've been saying for some 10 years or so - everyone should have some small percentage of their wealth in pm's, preferably physical, hands on stuff. I like to use 3-7% as a guide, but it's really up to you. More than this is fine, but now you're speculating. Speculation is fine so long as you know what is afoot.
Some 5% or is like the bed buddies, my grand kids still have. It helps them sleep at night.
My wee staff of pm's helps me sleep at night.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

"Does Stock Market Data Really Go Back 200 Years? by Jason Zweig at the WSJ.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124725925791924871

Hi Guys,
Thanks for this very vigorous MFO discussion exchange. The divergent perspectives are well reasoned and themselves sometimes complex. But I do not find the issue to be especially difficult. While I can not control investment outcomes, I have absolute control of my personal investment process. And process matters most.
Individual investors always have the option to make investing as complex or as simple as they choose. Choosing the complex route requires a commitment to study, to constant research, and most importantly to time demands. I sincerely hope there is a measurable payoff to this arduous and uncertain selection.
I emphasize uncertain because the accumulated data suggests that the odds of a positive Alpha (excess returns) are small, and diminish over time, even for a Herculean effort.
Although individual investors may indeed be smart and talented folks, it is highly likely that professional Mutual Fund and Hedge Fund mangers are still more smart and more talented. They certainly enjoy the advantages of their full time commitment that is supported by a well trained professional research staff.
Yet this exceptional group has deep rooted difficulties in outdistancing their benchmarks. Please see Barry Ritholz’s “The Most Fascinating Investing Paradox” article posted on MFO earlier. Here is the Link to revisit that article;
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-12/hedge-funds-underperform-as-investors-give-them-more-money
I recommend that you consider visiting a Vanguard Group 2010 study that was referenced in the article and provided data for Ritholz’s interpretation. It’s consistently a good policy to examine original sources. Here is a direct Link to the Vanguard work:
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/content/nonindexed/Do_hedge_funds_hedge_the_experience_of_the_great_recession.pdf
The Hedge Funds are prime illustrations of just how difficult it is to outscore the marketplace. These Hedge Funds are superb examples of complex investment strategy users. Their payoffs are dubious at best. Can individual investors do better? A few will, but the vast majority will not, regardless of dedicated effort. The market interactions are overwhelmingly complex.
So why not default to the simplest options? One or two Balanced mutual funds (like from Vanguard and/or from Dodge and Cox) might be a wise choice. If further diversification is deemed necessary, the Paul Farrell’s Lazy-man portfolios are convenient low cost options. Here is another repeat Link to his table of lazy-man portfolios generated by stellar investment wizards:
http://www.marketwatch.com/lazyportfolio
As always, the decision rests with the preferences of the individual investor. In a way, that’s too bad given his dismal track record.
According to CXO Advisory Group, Jim Cramer had an accuracy score that hovered just below 50% for the entire time of that extended study. Dice be a lady tonight.
Best Wishes.

hank, maybe this will assist you. From Siegel's book, latest edition. Looks like a read of Chapter 5 might clarify things for you even more. Hope this helps.
"Asset Returns Since 1802
Figure 1-1 is the most important chart in this book. It traces year by year how real (after-inflation) wealth has accumulated for a hypothetical investor who put a dollar in (1) stocks, (2) long-term government bonds, (3) U.S. Treasury bills, (4) gold, and (5) U.S. currency over the last two centuries. These returns are called total real returns and include income distributed from the investment (if any) plus capital gains or losses, all measured in constant purchasing power."
...................."The real return on fixed-income investments has averaged far less; on long-term government bonds the average real return has been 3.6 percent per year and on short-term bonds only 2.7 percent per year."
hank, note that the 3.6% and 2.7% correspond to the bonds and bills in his chart.
"The average real return on gold has been only 0.7 percent per year. In the long run, gold prices have remained just ahead of the inflation rate, but little more. The dollar has lost, on average, 1.4 percent per year of purchasing power since 1802, but it has depreciated at a significantly faster rate since World War II. In Chapter 5 we examine the details of these return series and see how they are constructed."
hank, regarding your comment: "Regarding investing in T-Bills, it's hard for me to understand how they would have approached gold's return through appreciation during the post-2000 time-frame"
I agree with you. From 2001 to 2011 gold had superb performance, and I'm sure Treasury bills did not even come remotely close. Siegel's data is the really long term......from 1802 thru 2012. He never suggested that there were not time periods of 10, 15, 20, 25 years, etc, where the results were not significantly different.
Take gold for example: it lost 90% of its purchasing power, that is to say, real return, from 1980 until it bottomed, somewhere around 2001. Even on a nominal basis it lost 70% (not taking inflation into account). Then from 2001 till 2011 it was probably the very best performing asset class, far better than stocks, bonds, "bills" [Treasury bills], etc.
Happy Investing

Note: The above data was taken from Jim Cramer's own website!
Just buying an S&P 500 index fund, you would have performed 36% better than enacting every single buy and sell of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, which is a paid service so you can constantly check your emails and make all the buys and sells.........so you can drastically underperform the market, and pay much higher taxes from all your buying and selling, versus say the Vanguard S&P 500 Index fund where you will only pay taxes on qualified dividends, as there has not been a capital gains distribution in more than 10 years.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
WSJ Slant:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stock-futures-edge-higher-1423833361
Bloomberg Slant:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-13/u-s-index-futures-gain-on-german-growth-headway-on-greek-talks
Reuters Slant;
http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USKBN0LH1C720150213
MarketWatch Slant:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-futures-set-for-solid-day-with-consumer-data-on-tap-2015-02-13/print
WSJ: Matkets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
Current Futures:
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx