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Bridgeway Funds reorganization is complete for Aggressive Investors 2 and Micro-Cap Limited funds.
I never understand why fund companies make a show of asking everyone if they care. The votes are counted by number of shares owned, NOT number of people voting one way or another.
Bridgeway employees and institutional investors could all by themselves have decided on this without asking anyone retail investor.
Why does Bridgeway continue to release new funds (the newest is Small Momentum or something, along with Omni and Omni Tax-advantaged)? Their stable already incldes funds that are aimed at market slices by cap and style. Now they're rolling funds into other funds? It was unclear why they needed to create a completely separate fund in Aggressive 2 when Aggressive 1 already existed as a closed fund. Aggressive 1 was supposedly able to dip into smaller cap and illiquid stocks but the benefit of flexibility here was never apparent.
John Montgomery has unimpeachable character compared to most others in the industry but something about this and previous "events" in Bridgeway past seem real bush league.
My interest in Omni stems from Larry Swedroe's use of it in his client accounts to capture small value but unfortunately it is only available to advisers from what I understand.
Honestly it seems like Bridgeway has lost interest in the little guy (or found us too unprofitable) and is now focusing on building institutional relationships.
Just because John Montgomery is a great person, I find it hard to support the notion that he is a good steward of investors money. Sure, he did basically pay people to own BRAGX, but there in is the problem. BRAGX, in particular, has not beat the index since 2007 and for most of that stretch it has finished in the bottom decile. Most of his other funds are not much better either (BRSVX, BRSGX….to name a few). There comes a point where performance needs to be factored into the equation of stewardship….not just low fees….which is what people seem to look at first regardless of everything else. In the end, I agree that it is odd and somewhat not in shareholders best interests that Mr. Montgomery has almost doubled the number of Bridgeway Funds during a less than admirable stretch of overall performance.
I did vote for the BRMCX and BRUSX reorganization (I already held BRAGX so I didn't have to vote on it). From what I remember reading, Bridgeway Funds had a small block of the shares as well as several large institutional investors held fairly large blocks.
While BRAGX has less AUM than BRAIX, the distribution ramifications to BRAGX shareholders would have been astronomical to reach the BRAIX NAV. For that reason as well as the BRAGX could invest in less liquid stocks than BRAIX, are the reasons why the lesser BRAIX (which has more AUM than BRAGX) was merged into BRAGX.
Comments
I never understand why fund companies make a show of asking everyone if they care. The votes are counted by number of shares owned, NOT number of people voting one way or another.
Bridgeway employees and institutional investors could all by themselves have decided on this without asking anyone retail investor.
John Montgomery has unimpeachable character compared to most others in the industry but something about this and previous "events" in Bridgeway past seem real bush league.
My interest in Omni stems from Larry Swedroe's use of it in his client accounts to capture small value but unfortunately it is only available to advisers from what I understand.
Honestly it seems like Bridgeway has lost interest in the little guy (or found us too unprofitable) and is now focusing on building institutional relationships.
What do you guys think?
While BRAGX has less AUM than BRAIX, the distribution ramifications to BRAGX shareholders would have been astronomical to reach the BRAIX NAV. For that reason as well as the BRAGX could invest in less liquid stocks than BRAIX, are the reasons why the lesser BRAIX (which has more AUM than BRAGX) was merged into BRAGX.