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  • A fund family not mentioned in the article that comes immediately to mind is Harbor Funds. From Harbor Bond Fund (PIMCO) and other PIMCO-managed bond funds, to Harbor Int'l (Northern Cross) and a slew of other fine and mediocre funds, they've put together a solid stable of outside-managed, reasonably priced, funds.

    Selected Funds (Selected American and Selected Int'l, originally Special) also comes to mind (both managed by Davis). It must have been a long time since I looked at these funds; I hadn't realized that Special changed its focus.

    Lots of load families seem to outsource the day-to-day management of funds.
  • My Funds are all no-load. Am I missing an opportunity by not considering some load funds.
    Are there outstanding funds that brokers can purchase but the retail cannot.

    A friend mentioned to me that he has a separately managed account where his broker supposedly buys a class of funds that is load but no load to the advisor and he passes that savings on to him. Of coarse he pays a 0.75% annual fee on the assets in his account.
    What would some of the best funds that would apply to this situation?
    Prinx
  • TANSTAAFL.

    Brokers get paid one way or another. If you buy a load fund through a broker and pay the load, most of that load goes to the broker and you don't pay the broker anything directly. If you pay the broker a percentage of assets each year, then the fund doesn't need to pay the broker, and will waive the load.

    The best way to buy load funds if you don't want advice is to buy the fund load-waived through a discount broker (Schwab and TD Ameritrade seem particularly good sources), or to buy no load "advisor class" shares through a discount broker.

    The latter seems to be getting harder to do, as fund families have been clamping down on the discount brokers. The idea of this share class for your friend's advisor to be able to sell the fund without a load. But if you could buy the same shares without paying the advisor 0.75%, then why would you ever employ the advisor?
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