FYI: (Click On Article title At Top Of Google Search)
This year’s market has not been good for anyone’s health. After the rockiest start ever to a new year, the volatility has continued such that even the recent three-day rally still has stocks down more than 6% as of Thursday. Health-care stocks, after five years of market-beating gains, have been hit particularly hard, down 8.6% for the year so far. The only sector in worse shape is financials, down 12.3%.
In our Jan. 30 cover story, Barron’s told readers it was “Time to Buy Bank Stocks.” Investors would be wise to look at health-care funds as well.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/#q=Two+Top+Health-Care+Funds+Barron's
Comments
Statements like this always leave me wondering what "consistent" means, and what "market" means.
As an example, has a fund that underperformed by 2% in each of 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, but outperformed by 15% in 2015 "consistently" outperformed? Its 1, 3, 5 year records say that it has done well, but I'd hardly call it consistent.
ETHSX's record is somewhat like that, only it has done well in the past three calendar years. Though it has done poorly this short YTD (as has the entire sector) relative to "the market". It did not fare well relative to "the market" in 2012, while 2010 and 2006 were relative disasters. Here I'm using the S&P 500 and MSCI ACWI to represent "the market".
IMHO more significant (for any fund) is how well it has done relative to its sector. ETHSX's rankings are in the bottom half (M* category) for 3, 5, 10, and 15 year periods. With this statement I'm guilty of the same cherry picking as Barron's - I'm not looking year by year (or rolling periods). Though year by year, still it has ended only two of the last ten calendar years in the top two quintiles.
Lipper says pretty much the same thing, ranking it a 3 on consistency (3, 5, 10, and overall) within its Lipper category.
Note that Lipper divides the health care fund universe into two parts - domestic and global. This is another illustration of why defining terms, i.e. "the market" matters. Lipper considers ETHSX a global fund (JAGLX being a more consistent peer), while Lipper considers FSPHX to be a consistent domestic health care fund.
Regards,
Ted
ETHSX Category Percentile Rank:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=ETHSX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
FSPHX Category Percentile Rank:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=FSPHX®ion=usa&culture=en_US
PRHSX Category Percentile Rank:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=PRHSX®ion=usa&culture=en_US
JAGLX Category Percentile Rank:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=JAGLX®ion=usa&culture=en_US
VGHCX Category Percentile Rank:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VGHCX®ion=usa&culture=en_US