Hi Tony,
Thank you for taking time to read and respond to my post. Unfortunately, I could not successfully access the Link that you provided.
But I suspect that it might be the same reference that MFOer Ted linked in his post titled “Do Active Funds have a Future?”. I’m not sure if that is the case. If so, I have copied Ted’s Link for completeness and easy access as follows (if not, no harm done):
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=659902
Author and Morningstar researcher John Rekenthaler arrives at a somewhat surprising partial conclusion for a long-term Morningstar contributor. I say partially because he fundamentally proclaims a victory for passive Index investing, but with a few meaningful exceptions. In some fund categories, active management does deliver superior annual returns over a respectable timeframe. None of these findings are everlasting.
Rekenthaler’s conclusions do not depart significantly from those in the article that I referenced. It is also consistent with the findings that I have often referenced in the semi-annual S&P SPIVA Scorecard and Persistency studies. There are always a few mutual fund categories where active fund management outdistances its passive counterparts.
That’s why, although I find the accumulating evidence very persuasive for mostly a passive Index investment strategy, in select fund groupings, active management does what it is paid to do. Positive Alpha does exist! Of course, the challenge is to find it.
Thanks for your help and your interest.
Best Wishes.

Friday night I'm opening a bottle of Rioja and making a toast to all the wise people I've read or discussed with here.
Cheers,
LLJB

'04 reserve picture here...bought at Costco...very wise move. Enjoy!

Hi Old_Skeet and thank you for your insights. Indeed, I see the beautiful simplicity in how your system allows you to evaluate bigger or smaller pieces of the portfolio, which I also attempt to do with the portfolio xray tool.
Your sleeves tend to be the "areas" (large cap, mid cap, small cap, developed international, emerging markets, bonds and alternative- meaning real estate, commodities, currencies, etc.) that I allocate assets to and then my "sleeves" tend to be growth vs. value. I'm wondering whether that's an oversight on my part. I don't focus much at all on the overall aggressiveness of my portfolio, which is very aggressive I would say, and I'm sure I suffer far more volatility than most would be comfortable with. I do pay attention to the income that my investments throw off, but mostly as an afterthought rather than a plan. It seems I have some things to think about as I start my planning cycle for the next year to 15 months. Thanks again!
VintageFreak, please have one more beer for me, you deserve it!!! Friday night I'm opening a bottle of Rioja and making a toast to all the wise people I've read or discussed with here.
Cheers,
LLJB

The article's argument is based on recent investor preferences - everybody and his dog is going after the good performance of passive funds over the past 5 years. My guess is that after the next solid correction, we will see articles about the superior performance of some actively managed funds.

FYI: Do active funds have a future? To cut to the chase: apparently not much.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=659902

@Old_Skeet, I would be grateful to learn more about your sleeve system, most importantly how you define your sleeves. Your results are impressive, congratulations!
I basically have only two missions, the first of which is to be (significantly) overweight emerging/frontier markets and underweight developed international markets. The second is to be, again "significantly" overweight small cap stocks. Roughly 50% of my portfolio is mutual funds and 50% is stocks. I have a handful of funds I love and would keep through thick and thin, and another handful that I like but would give up if I found another fund that I thought better. I manage my accounts as one, with decisions about which account to use based on tax considerations and what I would reduce first if I needed cash.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/81443/000119312514298028/d771703d497.htm
497 1 d771703d497.htm ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN CAP FUND, INC.
SUP-0101-0127-0814
LOGO
ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN CAP FUND, INC.
-AllianceBernstein International Discovery Equity Portfolio
-AllianceBernstein Market Neutral Strategy — Global
Supplement dated August 6, 2014 to the Summary Prospectuses and Prospectuses (the “Prospectuses”) dated November 1, 2013 for AllianceBernstein International Discovery Equity Portfolio and for AllianceBernstein Market Neutral Strategy-Global (each a “Fund” and collectively the “Funds”).
At a meeting held on August 6, 2014, the Board of Directors of AllianceBernstein Cap Fund, Inc. approved the liquidation and dissolution of the Funds. Each Fund has suspended sales of its shares pending the completion of the liquidation and the payment of liquidating distributions to its shareholders. Each Fund expects to make the liquidating distributions on or shortly after October 10, 2014.
In connection with the liquidation, the Board approved the immediate suspension of each Fund’s distribution and/or service (Rule 12b-1) fees. The Board also approved the waiver of contingent deferred sales charges (“CDSCs”) upon redemption of a Fund’s shares on or after the date of this Supplement. This CDSC waiver will also apply to redemptions of shares of other AllianceBernstein Mutual Funds that are acquired through exchange of a Fund’s shares on or after the date of this Supplement.
Shareholders may redeem shares of each Fund, and may exchange shares of the Fund for shares of the same class of other AllianceBernstein Mutual Funds, until October 8, 2014. Shareholders should be aware that each Fund will convert its assets to cash and/or cash equivalents approximately three weeks before the liquidating distributions are made to shareholders. After a Fund converts its assets to cash, the Fund will no longer pursue its stated investment objective or engage in any business activities except for the purposes of winding up its business and affairs, preserving the value of its assets, paying its liabilities, and distributing its remaining assets to shareholders.
This Supplement should be read in conjunction with the Prospectuses for the Funds.
You should retain this Supplement with your Prospectus for future reference.
AllianceBernstein® and the AB Logo are registered trademarks and service marks used by permission of the owner, AllianceBernstein L.P.

I am a retiree with a moderately invested 40/60 portfolio (significant mega cap domestic holdings) which as we know already has exposure to emerging market. I currently have a 5.35% allocation to GPEOX, which is my only "sector fund" exposure to Emerging Markets. I hope to open at least an equal allocation to SFGIX soon. Keeping in mind that I would really like to reduce bond exposure going forward, regarding the pending hard close of GPEOX, how much small cap is too much?

PIMCO's asset losses (and Mr. Gross's tantrums) have been much in the news, but Morningstar's recent fund flows report shows a fascinating collection of firms whose investors have been hitting the exits over the past twelve months:

• PIMCO, down $79 billion to $506 billion (owie)
  
• Columbia, down $11B to $167B
  
• Janus, down $11B to $102B
  
• American Funds, down $10B to $1.1 trillion
  
• Fidelity, down $6B to $1.2 trillion (which does look a lot like a rounding error)
  
• Hartford, down $6B to $97B
  
• Voya (nee ING), down $6B to $94B
  
• Thornburg, down $4B to $61B
  
• DWS, down $3B to $49B
  

The big gainers: Vanguard, DFA, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are all up by more than $20 billion.
David

I've been toying for a while with a story on Morningstar's venerable "buy the unloved" strategy. It starts with the simple premise that most people, quite reliably, do exactly the opposite of what's in their best interest. In its first manifestation, the strategy was to buy the three sectors that saw the greatest outflows (measured by change in percentage of assets at year's end) and hold them for 3-5 years while selling the most popular sectors. I liked it, then Morningstar stopped publishing it. When they resumed, the strategy had a far more conservative take: buy the three sectors that saw the greatest outflows measured in total dollar volume and hold them, while selling the most popular sectors.
Oh, by the way, they haven't traditionally allowed bond funds to play. They track bond flows but, in a private exchange, Mr. Kinnel allowed that "Generally they are too dull to provide much of a signal."
The problem with, and perhaps strength of, the newer version is that it means that you'll mostly be limited to play with your core sectors rather than volatile smaller ones. By way of example, large cap blend holds about $1.6 trillion - a 1% outflow there ($16 billion) would be an amount greater than the total assets in any of the 50 smallest fund categories. Large cap growth at $1.2 trillion is close behind.
Morningstar has taken, very quietly, to publishing fund flow reports each month. Here's the August report, for what interest it holds.
Who's unloved? Over the past 12 months:
intermediate term bonds - down $57 billion but up $7 billion YTD
large cap growth - down $35B
intermediate government - down $23B over the past 12 months
TIPs - down $22B
National munis - down $13B
commodities - down $11B
EM bonds - down $8B
Who's really unloved? Though Morningstar doesn't do the calculations, it appears that some of the emerging markets (China and India in particular) and currency funds have seen 10-25% of their assets disappear over the past year.
There's a lot of poke through. Hope you enjoy.
David

Hi Guys,
Here is a quote from Gerd Gigerenzer's book “Risk Savvy”: “People aren't stupid. The problem is that our educational system has an amazing blind spot concerning risk literacy. We teach our children the mathematics of certainty -- geometry and trigonometry -- but not the mathematics of uncertainty, statistical thinking.”
This quote appears in a recent article by the Motley Fool’s Morgan Housel titled “How to Scare Yourself Stupid”. It is an excellent short piece. The work addresses risk assessment and puts it in a proper context. Please access it at:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/05/how-to-scare-yourself-stupid.aspx?source=iaasitlnk0000003
The article correctly identifies that the problem is tightly coupled to our statistical blindness, our statistical illiteracy. Based on my long running MFO post record, you all recognize that understanding and acting on a statistical/probability basis is a primary theme on my posts. So Morgan Housel and I at least share this one common agreement.
In the 1950s through the 1980s I managed a stock portfolio that ranged from 15 to about 30 holdings. Keeping track of this number of holdings, when augmented by perhaps 30 candidate alternatives, was just an overwhelming workload. In the 1990s I began a switch to actively managed mutual funds, 100% actively managed funds. Then I read John Bogle’s “Common Sense on Mutual Funds” followed almost immediately by Burton Malkiel’s “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”.
These classic books are statistically loaded documents. They are eye-openers in terms of an overarching investment philosophy. My current portfolio still has a 50/50 mix of active and passive mutual fund products. By nature, I test the waters slowly and incrementally. I have finally decided to mostly join the passive investor camp.
The statistics are substantial and persuasive, but I still retain some measure of a flickering internal fire for active funds. Some do just fine over extended timeframes regardless of unattractive overall odds.
Please enjoy the Linked article.
Best Regards.

Good bond funds in my mind are there for good managers to navigate the market better than I could. Over the last 5-7 years I identified the best managers for me. So I own MWTRX, PIMIX, TGEIX, and TGBAX. That's where my bond money is.

rjb112, the Y axis represents the assets in billions, so your fund looks like it has kept the AUM under $500M.
Kevin

Couldn't read the article. It says not available. But I'm sitting here at about 90% in cash for the last couple weeks, all because I'm in the middle of a 401k to IRA roll-over. Perfect time for me if the market decides to correct. I've been conservative at about 40-50% equities the last couple years.
I have my new fund portfolio set up on paper and I plan to invest again with an aim of 50-60% equities by October with a tilt towards balance/allocation fund managers and large caps. I'll sprinkle in maybe end-of- (bull market) cycle sectors like technology and energy for alpha.

you have to option to edit your own posts - just start a practice post and type ignore in the title in the off-topic section.
C is for computer code you don't want formatted of fixed space tabs.

<?php
echo "this is a test";
or
col1  col2 col3
1        2      3

second red arrow is image thread
click on it and post an http link to your image

the third button above with red arrow is the url button - to add urls
hightlight the text as in "this is a test link pointing to your post"
below is test link pointing to your post
this is a test link pointing to your post
the fourth button is a quote

the fourth button is a block quote

>

Check out fundmojo.com. Not perfect, but not bad for a free web site.
I've attached a link for PTTRX.
http://www.fundmojo.com/mutualfund/fund_netasset_report/mutualfund/PTTRX

Check out fundmojo.com. Not perfect, but not bad for a free web site.
I've attached a link for PTTRX.
http://www.fundmojo.com/mutualfund/fund_netasset_report/mutualfund/PTTRX

MOZART325, that's not a bad website at all. Glad you pointed that out. Has some interesting information. I'll be visiting that website more often.
AUM data was very good but limited to about one year.

Paul, in the past I've used the Wellstrade site for this information:
Enter Symbol
Select "Get Mutual Fund Profile"
Total Net Assets By Year
Kevin

Kevin, for the fund I looked up, here's what I saw under Total Net Assets By Year

I wasn't able to tell what the actual AUM were. Just a general idea whether they were increasing or decreasing.
This was with Internet Explorer. Maybe with Chrome or Firefox you see something different.
Perhaps I missed a link that you saw?

David-
I think the OP wanted historical assets under management, not historical prices.
George..

Yes, that's certainly what I'm interested in, historical AUM.
I've known about the Yahoo Finance historical prices for quite some time.

Can someone please post a brief tutorial on how to use the below three buttons (red arrows) when posting? [Code; Image; URL buttons]
I have seen a couple of message boards that have "practice threads." On the practice threads, posters can practice using some of the tools, such as the three buttons above, attaching graphic images like the one I'm about to attach, etc. Might be good to have a practice thread at MFO.

Also, today I saw a post where the following words (in quotations) were a clickable link, "Japan, monetary policy and recession?" I've posted words as clickable links on another message board using HTML code. I have a feeling that the C button above can do that, but don't want to "practice" and mess up a post. Is that done by using standard HTML code, or the C button?
thanks

A bit more conservative this year: 50% stock (20% EM), 30% bond, 20% cash.