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I'm reaching for yield in my FI funds, in Junk, rather than EM. The latter does not offer a yield that matches domestic Junk. Back during the '08 Financial Crash, I was getting 7% in EM bonds. I'm at about 7% yield combined, in PRCPX and TUHYX these days. PRWCX and PRCFX also hold a variety of bonds. Also, wife holds BALFX in IRA--- another balanced fund.
In the IRA. Sold a small "starter" position in DGRW now that it is in the green after I bought it last November. I am now around 6-7% equity in the IRA.
Bought FLTR and CBUDX to equal about 6-7% each of the portfolio.
I am eyeballing FSLD, otherwise the bond lineup is FGUSX, BUBIX, CBLDX, BBBMX, FLTR, CBUDX. At the present time I don't see any reason to get into longer duration bond funds.
At the present time I don't expect to need to take money out of the IRA until 2029, or April 1 of 2030. So there is still time to get back into equities if conditions look good to me. At present, they don't. Too much exogenous volatility generated by political policies.
Initiated a position in SOR, a moderately conservative global allocation CEF managed by the same team as FPACX. At a 5% discount and 5.7% distribution, the quarterly discussions reflect a bit more aggressive posturing than FPACX, particularly with a FI position in private credit.
Initiated a position in SOR, a moderately conservative global allocation CEF managed by the same team as FPACX. At a 5% discount and 5.7% distribution, the quarterly discussions reflect a bit more aggressive posturing than FPACX, particularly with a FI position in private credit.
We shall see.
Using up some of the dry powder you mentioned yesterday?
Well. My IRA still has toe in equity in case I'm wrong.
Took a flyer on 500s of GXPS, the highly-focused Consumer Staples ETF in the ProCap line that yogi posted about yesterday. Trying to shift more defensively in one of my accounts but don't want to hog-wild on my usual sectors-of-interest these days (energy/electric/utes)
GDL reminds me of GLD. The latter is an etf that invests in gold shares. Widely held.
GDL on the other hand is a CEF that seeks stability of principal + modest returns by investing in mergers / acquisitions that are in the process of completion. By using arbitrage they skim some profit from the underlying transactions. It is said to be Mario Gabelli’s largest personal holding. Of the CEFs I’ve owned, GDL is the most conservative. Lost only a bit over 6% in 2022.
TRTY is a Cambrea fund-of-funds and claims to have 35% in trend following strategies, though I’m not seeing that much looking at its holdings. It also uses gold / gold miners for hedging, although it appears to comprise less than 10% of the fund. Like GDL, TRTY is modest return / low volatility. It lost only 3.3% in 2022. From what I’ve read, trend following is having an uncharacteristically poor year. So, there may be some pent-up potential in TRTY. I’ll note that TF works both ways and will short securities in bad markets. It also incorporates securities of all types: stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, etc.
A key difference is in fees. TRTY charges only for the underlying funds and currently has a 0.45% ER. GDL, including interest for leverage, comes in at over 3%. Both are small. GDL is at $93 M. TRTY at $117 M. It does make them a bit challenging to trade.
Thanks for detailed breakdown, never had enough time to research CEFs, seemed opaque. The affable billionaire Mario seems to have done ok last few years. But seems to trade like a convertible fund. But correlation with SPY is low, so a good metric:
Created a “hedge” position consisting of 10 etfs / CEFs which may not appreciate much in good times but may outperform if or when the new ”permanently higher plateau” gives way. Funded from sale of the 14% TRTY position. For $4.99 monthly Fidelity allows an unlimited number of baskets - up to 50 holdings in each. I’ve been very pleased with the earlier one consisting of 10 CEFs.
Basket 2 - Equally weighted
SPDN TAIL FMY DBMF GDL FXY FXF FMF NOBL XLV
If my calculations are correct the above contains:
1 inverse S&P fund 1 tail-risk fund (benefits from higher volatility) 1 intermediate to long-term bond fund 1 short-term arbitrage fund 2 managed futures funds 2 foreign currency funds 1 health care fund 1 high dividend stock fund
Not static. Will make changes to holdings if / when conditions change. Plus quarterly rebalance.
@bee… thanks for raising the question of how to perceive PRPFX. Its raw performance is and has been awesome and seems greater than the sum of its parts. We owned it years ago and now again. I am guessing it’s recent out performance is due to its gold allocation. It’s not cheap and has no yield so some here would pass. I am loving it and I call it my hedge but what do I know?
It’s a fund with many different types of assets which do tend to hedge themselves. Over 25 year periods if I had to own just one fund PRPFX would be the one. It’s designed to “endure” many different market cycles. But nearer term the fund is prone to multi-year periods of outperformance and underperformance. Not that you’ll loose a lot of money. You won’t. But as good as it is, I’ve seen periods when investors piled in when the fund was soaring, but became disenchanted a year or two later when it lost a bit and entered the doldrums - and they sold out. Last ones in might even have lost a little.
Will the fund effectively “hedge” the remainder of your portfolio against big losses? No. I wouldn’t think so. Owned it nearly 25 years. Sold a year ago. No longer fits my needs. Everyone here probably knows a Troy Ounce of gold has doubled in 2 years from around $1600 to $3400.
I”ve linked the chart on holdings. The fund has caught several strong winds of late. Gold has more than doubled in price over 2 years - maybe a bit longer. Silver’s hot too. The portion in the Swiss franc has benefitted from the weaker dollar this year. And the hold in “Aggressive Growth” (stocks) has benefitted from the likes of NVDA which now comprises 8% of the S&P by weight and is bigger than the entire economies of some countries (like Germany).
In the following:
Gold 20% Silver 5% Swiss Franc 10% Real Estate & Nat Resources 15% Aggressive Growth 15% Dollar Assets (Dollar denominated bonds) 35%
.....Well, well, well. My Junk has held up pretty well of late, even though it's supposed to be more tied to equity performance than Investment Grade paper. My stocks--- both in funds and single stocks, have been on a roller coaster from earlier this week until today. Friday. They have pretty much given up the amazing but short-lived highs from a few days ago.
@Hank. I am so impressed that you hung on to PRPFX for nearly 25 years. We haven’t owned anything for 25 years except our house (37 years ) and our last boat, sold recently after almost 25 years.
PRPFX has outperformed PRWCX the last 5y, everyone's hard-on here for over that period of time ! --- good on them
otoh FPACX has done quite a bit better than either !
double-damn
otoh2, if I had taken my subpar-investor father's advice in the 1980s and put moneys into FSPTX, period, full stop, and left it alone ($1k to $370k to date since early '80s !!), and then stuck with the identical advice from RWeitz a decade or so later. why, there would never be any need to follow a forum like this or read endlessly endlessly about strategy and balance and conditions so on. Whew.
So ... persistence and patience and faith and initial good choosing mean reclamation of every bloody minute fussing w MFO.
damn PRPFX has outperformed PRWCX the last 5y, everyone's hard-on here for over that period of time ! --- good on them
otoh FPACX has done quite a bit better than either !
double-damn
otoh2, if I had taken my subpar-investor father's advice in the 1980s and put moneys into FSPTX, period, full stop, and left it alone ($1k to $370k to date since early '80s !!), and then stuck with the identical advice from RWeitz a decade or so later. why, there would never be any need to follow a forum like this or read endlessly endlessly about strategy and balance and conditions so on. Whew.
So ... persistence and patience and faith and initial good choosing mean reclamation of every bloody minute fussing w MFO.
huh, how about that
The milk has been spilled… Now we can only give advice to kids with “I will not be ignored speech”.
PRPFX, FPACX, FSPTX, VPMCX, SGENX(Jean-Marie Eveillard’s old fund), and VOO, - DCA bi-weekly and call it a day.
@Equalizer and David Moran. + 1. I have owned FPACX in the past and some consider Romick a star, but the ER makes me gag to hold that much cash. I urge everyone to check out the M* comment about FPA Crescent investors. Not sure I am qualified to join that group.
Comments
Bought FLTR and CBUDX to equal about 6-7% each of the portfolio.
I am eyeballing FSLD, otherwise the bond lineup is FGUSX, BUBIX, CBLDX, BBBMX, FLTR, CBUDX. At the present time I don't see any reason to get into longer duration bond funds.
At the present time I don't expect to need to take money out of the IRA until 2029, or April 1 of 2030. So there is still time to get back into equities if conditions look good to me. At present, they don't. Too much exogenous volatility generated by political policies.
Pharma is way out of favor. RFK Jr. might even help to provide some opportunities in this sector. He cray-cray.
We shall see.
Well. My IRA still has toe in equity in case I'm wrong.
Thanks for the tip @PRESSmUP - I’ll add SOR to my CEF bench and start following it.
Gabelli’s (arbitrage fund) GDL wasn’t a bad investment for me. Just moving a few deck chairs around … in anticipation … of what?
“oh no
Guadalajara won't do…
I’m never going back to my old school
GDL reminds me of GLD. The latter is an etf that invests in gold shares. Widely held.
GDL on the other hand is a CEF that seeks stability of principal + modest returns by investing in mergers / acquisitions that are in the process of completion. By using arbitrage they skim some profit from the underlying transactions. It is said to be Mario Gabelli’s largest personal holding. Of the CEFs I’ve owned, GDL is the most conservative. Lost only a bit over 6% in 2022.
TRTY is a Cambrea fund-of-funds and claims to have 35% in trend following strategies, though I’m not seeing that much looking at its holdings. It also uses gold / gold miners for hedging, although it appears to comprise less than 10% of the fund. Like GDL, TRTY is modest return / low volatility. It lost only 3.3% in 2022. From what I’ve read, trend following is having an uncharacteristically poor year. So, there may be some pent-up potential in TRTY. I’ll note that TF works both ways and will short securities in bad markets. It also incorporates securities of all types: stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, etc.
A key difference is in fees. TRTY charges only for the underlying funds and currently has a 0.45% ER.
GDL, including interest for leverage, comes in at over 3%. Both are small. GDL is at $93 M. TRTY at $117 M. It does make them a bit challenging to trade.
Thanks for detailed breakdown, never had enough time to research CEFs, seemed opaque. The affable billionaire Mario seems to have done ok last few years. But seems to trade like a convertible fund. But correlation with SPY is low, so a good metric:
* 1-Year Correlation: 0.28
* 3-Year Correlation: 0.41
* 5-Year Correlation: 0.46
cashdry powder in our IRA accounts.Basket 2 - Equally weighted
SPDN
TAIL
FMY
DBMF
GDL
FXY
FXF
FMF
NOBL
XLV
If my calculations are correct the above contains:
1 inverse S&P fund
1 tail-risk fund (benefits from higher volatility)
1 intermediate to long-term bond fund
1 short-term arbitrage fund
2 managed futures funds
2 foreign currency funds
1 health care fund
1 high dividend stock fund
Not static. Will make changes to holdings if / when conditions change. Plus quarterly rebalance.
Do you consider PRPFX a permanent hank portfolio hedge?
For example, it's LT Bonds holdings should appreciate if ST rates are cuts.
It is ranked #1 in its category YTD, 1 YR, 3 YR, & 5 YR. Impressive.
Good question @bee
Yes and no!
It’s a fund with many different types of assets which do tend to hedge themselves. Over 25 year periods if I had to own just one fund PRPFX would be the one. It’s designed to “endure” many different market cycles. But nearer term the fund is prone to multi-year periods of outperformance and underperformance. Not that you’ll loose a lot of money. You won’t. But as good as it is, I’ve seen periods when investors piled in when the fund was soaring, but became disenchanted a year or two later when it lost a bit and entered the doldrums - and they sold out. Last ones in might even have lost a little.
Will the fund effectively “hedge” the remainder of your portfolio against big losses? No. I wouldn’t think so. Owned it nearly 25 years. Sold a year ago. No longer fits my needs. Everyone here probably knows a Troy Ounce of gold has doubled in 2 years from around $1600 to $3400.
I”ve linked the chart on holdings. The fund has caught several strong winds of late. Gold has more than doubled in price over 2 years - maybe a bit longer. Silver’s hot too. The portion in the Swiss franc has benefitted from the weaker dollar this year. And the hold in “Aggressive Growth” (stocks) has benefitted from the likes of NVDA which now comprises 8% of the S&P by weight and is bigger than the entire economies of some countries (like Germany).
In the following:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss Franc 10%
Real Estate & Nat Resources 15%
Aggressive Growth 15%
Dollar Assets (Dollar denominated bonds) 35%
PRPFX has outperformed PRWCX the last 5y, everyone's hard-on here for over that period of time ! --- good on them
otoh FPACX has done quite a bit better than either !
double-damn
otoh2, if I had taken my subpar-investor father's advice in the 1980s and put moneys into FSPTX, period, full stop, and left it alone ($1k to $370k to date since early '80s !!), and then stuck with the identical advice from RWeitz a decade or so later. why, there would never be any need to follow a forum like this or read endlessly endlessly about strategy and balance and conditions so on. Whew.
So ... persistence and patience and faith and initial good choosing mean reclamation of every bloody minute fussing w MFO.
huh, how about that
Now we can only give advice to kids with “I will not be ignored speech”.
PRPFX, FPACX, FSPTX, VPMCX, SGENX(Jean-Marie Eveillard’s old fund), and VOO, - DCA bi-weekly and call it a day.
Hey everybody, an old man is talking!
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1E5FAi8m4c/?mibextid=wwXIfr