Interesting fund commentaries to share

slick

One of the more interesting funds in my retirement portfolio is WAGTX. I just finished reading the latest quarterly commentary. Ya gotta love a fund that states:

"Summarizing, this was a quarter in which almost nothing worked very well for us. We underperformed in our three most overweighted sectors—information technology, health care and consumer discretionary—where our sharpest stock-picking has been in the past. And while almost half of our stocks were up during the quarter, just more than half
were down and among those decliners were two of our top holdings, which fell double digits"

Read the following for some candor that often is lacking in other fund reports.

https://secure.wasatchfunds.com/Our-Funds/~/media/Docs-Fund/MgrComments/WAGTX.ashx

It's a keeper for me, the ride is not always smooth, but not much is better than Wasatch funds.

Would love to see some other commentaries that you find interesting.

rjb112

"Every quarter we take a chance to review our mistakes, both those of commission and those of omission.
Around a year ago, we sold Facebook, Tesla Motors and MAKO Surgical. Post our sale, all of these stocks doubled. Had we continued to hold them, our performance would be measurably better."

I like the honesty and candor here.

JohnChisum

It is refreshing to read a honest report that exposes the bad along with the success. As long as they don't make a habit of the bad picks.

Charles

Whitebox.

SeaFarer.

mrdarcey

Grandeur Peak:

"Regarding our Global and International Opportunities funds, coming off of a couple of great years of performance, we’d normally be feeling OK about having a few average quarters. But as we dig into the reasons for the average type of results we’re disappointed in our performance and ourselves and we want to be open about this."

Two pages of single spaced, equity by equity exposition follows.

rjb112

Love that candor. Refreshing honesty. Just one thing I don't like one bit: per another thread, looks like their pattern will be to close all their funds early after inception, and you can only continue to invest in them if you fall into some very narrow categories, which I don't fall into. Most people in taxable accounts will be out of luck.

mrdarcey

I'm in the process of moving GPROX directly to them in a Roth wrapper to avoid that.

I'm not 100% sure what the status of this would be in a taxable account, but one possible solution might be to move your holdings and then start an AIP. I know that means you have to hold directly, but they allow automatic investments over any period from weekly to yearly for as little as $50 a pop.

LLJB

Given the connection between Wasatch and Grandeur Peak its not surprising that a culture of candor and transparency prevails at both. A long time ago I owned a few Baron funds and found the quarterly commentaries well worth the read. They were full of interesting information about the investments as well as candor when they made mistakes. Its been a while now and it was mostly Ron Baron's writing I found interesting rather than any of his other managers, but I guess he's still writing for the funds he manages.