MFOHome About Commentary Discussions Funds The Best Resources Support Us!

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Categories

In this Discussion

Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

RNDLX

willmatt72
in Fund Discussions
Any thoughts on this fund's performance this year? It seems to be struggling lately, especially holding its NAV when factoring in its dividend payouts. I've held it for almost a year and noticed that it can't maintain its NAV. It's disappointing to me given the alleged talent of the fund managers involved. If you hold this fund, can you explain it's purpose in your portfolio and how you think this fund is doing given its ER as well.

Comments

  • gmarceau
    1.6 ER for a bond fund is one of the main problems.
  • CrashCrash
    I do not own it. The breadth of its holdings seems astoundingly spread out. M* reports 753 bonds, 5 stocks. Only 11% of holdings in top 10. "Strategic" is a euphemism for (mostly) HY. My own bond funds cannot lately hold their NAV, either. But you're getting a 5.3% yield, not shabby. My own more risky EM bond fund yields just above that, at 5.87%. I would not dump it yet, just on the basis of YTD performance.
  • MarkMark
    The ER of 1.6% is not unusual for a fund of funds and the trading strategies employed. You do realize that RNDLX is basically a fund comprised of CEF's (Closed-End Funds) i.e a fund-of-funds. I also don't quite know what to make of M* list of portfolio holdings other than they most likely not referring to a portfolio of approximately 753 individual bonds and 5 stocks.

    Their top holding, Pimco Dynamic Credit Income (PCI) shows a portfolio of Bonds - 525 long + 1 short and Other - 100 long + 226 short. How is that accounted for in what M* shows as the portfolio holdings of RNDLX?

    Of further interest to me here is that one could own PCI outright and earn a 9.46% distribution or you could own it by paying 1.6% to RiverNorth to own RNDLX shares and collect 5.3% for your money.

    Gosh I wish Ed was still around these parts talking CEF's.
  • claimui
    edited July 2015
    The ER of the fund itself (according to their fact sheet) is 1.16% -- the remaining expenses are for the underlying funds.

    RNDLX has a CEF allocation and a bond allocation (currently divided about 50/50). The CEF portion is something like a fund-of-funds, but presumably they are trading opportunistically to buy CEFs at a discount to fair value. Whether that is worth 1.16% is the real question.

    The bond allocation is managed by DoubleLine and presumably a similar strategy as available through other funds such as ADBLX and DBLFX. Even using the 1.16% figure, RNDLX is notably more expensive than the other DoubleLine funds, so you are certainly paying mostly for the CEF side and for the overall portfolio allocation.
  • CrashCrash
    DBLFX= DLFNX, for those who don't hold at least $100,000.00 in the fund.
  • gmarceau
    The retail shares used to be at 1.4 and once it went to 1.6, I was out. I understand the reason for the expenses because it's holding.CEFs, but I'd rather be directly in PDI, PCI, etc.
  • AndyJ
    edited July 2015
    RNDLX assets are divvied into three sleeves, two FI sleeves run by Dbl and the CEF sleeve run by RN, and RN as I understand it determines the allocations to each sleeve, which they can change fairly significantly. One attraction someone on M* mentioned is that the "opportunistic" Dbl sleeve apparently uses a strategy that isn't available retail any other way. Click for the current fact sheet here.

    I owned it in the past and was disappointed with it; came to the conclusion that RN was not able to do a decent job with the CEF sleeve. There's of course the attraction of paying someone to do the time-consuming work of CEF investing, but I just didn't think RN has the chops to do it well.

    I still wanted to have a hand in CEFs here & there, so decided instead of RNDLX to keep a very short list of CEFs of different categories on watch and own 2-3-4 at small percentages only when they look cheap based on historical premia/discounts.
  • willmatt72
    It appears as though the fund derives much of its dividend from the CEF sleeve of the portfolio. Unfortunately, RN hasn't done a great job picking CEFs over the past year. I know several CEFs have been hit hard lately so I'm hoping they can identify those CEFs that are due for a turnaround. It's on my watch list now.
  • jlev
    I'm fairly curious that their 3rd largest position appears to be in RNHIX.
  • willmatt72
    jlev said:

    I'm fairly curious that their 3rd largest position appears to be in RNHIX.

    Interesting. RNHIX is a fund of CEF funds. If you join this holding with all of the other CEF holdings in RNDLX, it appears that the managers are all over the place with CEFs. I don't see any rhyme or reason for holding so many CEFs.

  • willmatt72
    Now, the problem I have is a wash sale. If I sell RNDLX, I'll have a realized loss. But I have to be careful what I purchase with the proceeds.
Sign In or Register to comment.