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Charles Royce Passes CEO Baton To Clark; Will Continue Stockpicking
Awesome ! They'll probably list him as lead or co-manager on 5 new funds. Now, when I say "5 new funds", do I mean 5 brand-new copy-cat funds Royce will roll out this summer, or do I mean 5 funds for which Chuck wasn't previously listed as a portfolio manager?
No matter, the street, and the small(er) cap universe can't get enough of Chuck ! The bow-tie, cashmere sweater crowd is going nuts !!! A return of the true fiduciary (...um, kind of, but not really...).
I just looked at the Royce web site. As we know they are "small cap specialists". They have 11 domestic small cap funds with 10 year records. How many of them would you guess were able to beat the 7.10% annualized returns of the Vanguard small-cap index fund VSMAX? Would you believe none? That's the fact. So I looked at the 3 and five years returns. They are also batting an even .000 for those periods. Are they not a marquee example of the damage that high fees, stock-picking mistakes, and trading can do? Is there something I am missing? All those smart people going to work every day for 10 years!
Dig a bit deeper on Royce -- look at how many of their funds have significant stakes in international stocks (say, above 5-7% or so). Some have topped 25% or more. Look at how many of them regularly hold mid-caps (hence the reason Royce refers to themselves "small-er cap" specialists).
Yet their benchmark is always one of the US small cap index. That is, when they list a benchmark. You see, in Royce's annual and semi-annual reports for funds that are having a bad stretch, they suppress some rolling intervals, as well as the benchmark returns and other performance metrics. And, no, its not just for the newer funds which don't have a sufficient track record. Nearly every single report for the past several years has done this -- and they're not consistent in which funds' data they suppress.
Don't let the bow tie fool you. Royce only wants your money. And if they don't have a fund that suits you, they'll re-name or create a parallel copy-cat fund to suit.
Comments
No matter, the street, and the small(er) cap universe can't get enough of Chuck ! The bow-tie, cashmere sweater crowd is going nuts !!! A return of the true fiduciary (...um, kind of, but not really...).
So I looked at the 3 and five years returns. They are also batting an even .000 for those periods.
Are they not a marquee example of the damage that high fees, stock-picking mistakes, and trading can do? Is there something I am missing?
All those smart people going to work every day for 10 years!
Yet their benchmark is always one of the US small cap index. That is, when they list a benchmark. You see, in Royce's annual and semi-annual reports for funds that are having a bad stretch, they suppress some rolling intervals, as well as the benchmark returns and other performance metrics. And, no, its not just for the newer funds which don't have a sufficient track record. Nearly every single report for the past several years has done this -- and they're not consistent in which funds' data they suppress.
Don't let the bow tie fool you. Royce only wants your money. And if they don't have a fund that suits you, they'll re-name or create a parallel copy-cat fund to suit.