Question about YACKX, PRPFX, and MERDX

Archaic

I am planning to begin putting money into one of the three following funds, with the goal of taking income out of the fund 5 years or more from now. Each of the three, however, has a possible worry:

The Yacktman Fund (YACKX): AMG recently bought a majority interest in Yacktman Asset Management Co.

The Permanent Portfolio (PRPFX): has a fine recent record, but its unusual asset structure may suffer in a rising interest rate environment.

The Meridian Growth Fund (MERDX): recently lost Richard Aster, president and portfolio manager.

Which of these would you pick for the smoothest sailing in the next 5 plus years?

Thank you,

Archaic

MikeM

I think you listed legitimate concerns about all 3 funds. I own both PRPFX and the other Yacktman fund, YAFFX. I am not concerned at all at this point on YAFFX. I would be more concerned if Yacktman senior left the fund (or retired). But so far I haven't heard that to be the case. PRPFX is 15% of my portfolio. I intend to reduce that percentage some time this year. I, myself, would not gamble on MERDX with the loss of Aster.

If you are looking for consistency and a manager that has capital preservation as his first goal, you may want to add FPACX to your short list. I'm very comfortable with this manager. Another consideration if you are looking for an income oriented fund might be PGDIX. I recently started to invest in this fund. It is listed as a large value world fund by Morningstar. But it really invests in a variety of income producing vehicles. Here is a link to the funds web site description:

http://www.principalfunds.com/investor/promo/gdif/

Good luck with your choice.

perpetual_Bull

"goal of taking income out of the fund 5 years"

Think carefully about funds like FPACX, VWINX, JPVTX, BUFBX, etc. The Yacktman's did very well during our last bear market, but they've been flooded with performance chasing money because of it. This kind of money flies the coop with any kind of underperformance, etc. It already happened with FPACX when they wouldn't buy overvalued internet stocks during the tech boom. Recently, this kind of money ran scared from FAIRX.

I think i'd stick with VWINX with only five years left

Investor

Take a look at GLRBX. It is a steady eddy fund and compatible with your 5 year target.

Archaic

Reply to @MikeM: Thank you, Mike. It's very helpful to hear what you have to say about the Yacktman funds, and about MERDX. Actually, MERDX would have been my first choice, and after reading your words I dug deeper and abandoned it.

Archaic