I'm considering swapping one MFO-profiled fund (HUSIX) for another, TDVFX. I can do this without tax consequences. Both have performed poorly over the past year, but I expect that now and then from a deep value fund, that doesn't bother me (much.)
My thoughts are: TDVFX has a lower expense ratio (1.20% vs 1.85%) and smaller asset base (about $500 million vs. $1 billion, including separate accounts), plus it seems more of a team-managed effort than one based on a star manager, and I rather prefer the idea of a management team based in St. Louis instead of Southern California.
HUSIX is overweight is financials and basic materials. TDVFX is overweight in energy and industrials. I'm not capable of deciding which overweight is a more likely bet.
One advantage to HUSIX is that it's remarkably tax efficient, only 3 basis points (0.03%) over the last 5 years, as opposed to TDVFX's still modest, but higher 0.73%, according to M*.
HUSIX also had a record of bouncing back really well from bad years like the one it's been having.
Any thoughts?
Comments
I thought about this same question on several occasions and I've landed with TDVFX.
The lower expense ratio and smaller asset base were part of that and I also appreciate that David said the Towle family has over 90% of their net worth invested in the strategy. I hadn't paid attention to what you noticed about the team approach, but if I had that would have been a plus as well even though I suspect the elder Towle's opinion carries a good deal more weight than any of the others. Aside from the mutual fund, the Towle strategy has a history dating back to the early 1980s and if you believe what's on their website the performance has been fantastic. Even though I don't give full credit to performance outside of the mutual fund structure, I appreciate the longevity of their approach and the track record.
One other thing I've noticed, which I realize can change at any time, is that Towle has a much higher percentage of "value" holdings according to M* than Huber. When I put that together with David's comments that Towle is one of the few who's willing risk the pain of pursuing the full potential of deeply undervalued stocks, I decided that TDVFX was the better way to go for me.
Many thanks for your thoughts. I have pretty much decided on the swap, but it's nice to see someone else has come to the same conclusion. With my luck, the day after I sell it HUSIX is going to surge... but I feel it's the right thing.
May we both be glad of our choice!
I admire Towle's convictions, but you need to make sure they align with your own. "Deep value" can be very volatile and gut-wrenching, with long periods in the dumps until (if) they recover. I used to hold FAIRX and FAAFX, and I get a similar concern with TDVFX.
I think PVFIX (another MFO profiled fund) is the most compelling of the (open) small value funds right now. But I think it suffers the same problem with ARIVX -- it charges too much to hold so much cash. If I had to pick a small value fund now, I would just go with the Vanguard Small Value Index or similar.
Like you, I think PVFIX is a reasonably compelling fund and like you I'm not fond of the big cash position. It feels to me like they become market timers and we know how that usually works out. David Iben had an interesting chart in his quarterly conference call for KGGAX that he used to make a point about valuation vs. timing. It showed, in more detail than I'll mention, if he buys a business that's worth twice as much as he buys it for and it takes 10 years for the market to recognize the true worth of the company, he still makes 7% annually on the investment. If he buys a company that's worth 5 times as much as he pays then he makes 17% annually even if it takes 10 years for the company's value to be recognized.
His point was that if he gets the valuation right then whether he's early or not is far less important, part of which is because he thinks 10 years would be an unusually long time for the market to overlook the company's value and part of which is because he's been early for the last 2 years.
It seems like value generally has had a pretty rough ride of it for a while now so hopefully the fun times when value does really well aren't too far off in the future.