FYI, the Supplement to the RCTIX Prospectus, dated 3/25/2022, states the following:
"The following changes are being made to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”) of the
River Canyon Total Return Bond Fund (the “Fund”).
The information identifying the Fund’s portfolio manager on page 4 of the prospectus in the subsection entitled
“Portfolio Management” is deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:
Portfolio Managers
Todd Lemkin
Portfolio Manager
Length of Service: Since March 2022
Sam Reid
Portfolio Manager
Length of Service: Since March 2022"
George Jikovski, the manager since the inception of the fund in 2014, has apparently been replaced. Hopefully, yesterday's fund performance is not a sign of things to come under the new managers.
Fred
Comments
I wonder what transpired? RCTIX key-man risk was a concern of mine.
I asked RCF the following questions in September 2019:
The prospectus states that the fund is managed using a team-based approach.
Besides Mr. Jikovski, who else is on the team and what is their tenure with Canyon Partners?
Is there a current succession plan for the portfolio manager?
RCF response (slightly edited):
There are three designated members of the RCTIX team. George, Alex Siroky and Guillermo Serrano.
Alex has been a senior analyst on the team and we expect to add him as a Co-PM at the end of the year.
Alex has been at Canyon for one year, but spent the prior 10 years at Athene asset management.
During Alex’s tenure at Athene it grew from managing a few hundred million to over $100B in structured credit.
Guillermo has worked with George at TCW and at Canyon for almost 20 years.
He joined Canyon shortly after George did in 2004.
He is a research analyst and builds many of our models to evaluate these securities.
The River team leverage’s the other 49 investment professionals at Canyon.
For example, once we hit $100mm in AUM we will begin to invest in CLO tranches.
We have an 8 person CLO team managing over $4.5B in AUM.
George will work closely with them to analyze the CLO structures and the underlying collateral of bank loans.
George has been at Canyon for 15 years and is in his early 40s.
We don’t anticipate him leaving anytime soon, but we are constantly looking to develop our talent in the event someone leaves. At this time there is no designated successor.
You may need to sign in or sign up to read the article in its entirety.
Excerpts below.
"‘After 15 years at Canyon Partners, George Jikovski, partner and manager of our River Canyon Total Return fund, is leaving the firm. We’re actively recruiting his replacement, and in the interim the fund will be managed by Todd Lemkin, our CIO, and Sam Reid, our top debt trader,’ the spokesperson said."
"Jikovski had run the fund since late December 2014, investing almost exclusively in securitized assets and posting a 5.6% annualized return through Friday. The Bloomberg US Aggregate, by contrast, delivered a 1.9% annualized return over that time."
"The fund under Jikovski also delivered some extra volatility, posting a 4.4% standard deviation of returns compared to 3.3% for the index, but its returns were so far ahead of the index that its Sharpe Ratio of 1.13 more than doubled the 0.51 reading of the index."
"More than half of the fund is in floating rate securities. The popularity of these assets for both their higher yield and their inflation protection has led to their being securitized in collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) in recent years."
Probably time to sell
Automatic investing is the more obscure one. You don't need to already have money in a fund to check out the IRA min. But you do need to have money in a fund to test whether an automatic investment is accepted. Of course one can call and ask.
I have a fund there (in an IRA) that used to have a lower IRA min. If I sold it off now I could not get in again. And over the years, sometimes automatic investment worked, sometimes not. Things change and it can be hard to find out.
My last call was two days ago for the absolute return fund FARIX, and no, it's not available to auto-invest either. The info is readily available to the CSR; it took the fellow I talked to this time about 5 seconds to find it. Seems like it wouldn't be a big deal for Fido to add that info to the fund pages.
But I think I am out as well, when the manger disappears
But there are so few alternatives that are not under lots of water.
Anybody else a bit concerned that RPHIX seems to be one of few bond funds even treading water?
Fido hiring, a growth sign, eh? The times I've called over many years, if the CSR couldn't readily help; the proper person was sought. No problem with that. 'Course, the caller must have a properly framed question in the first place, to expect a proper answer.
Fidelity hiring
Did you check it?
Re customer competence, in the past 3 yrs, I have lost count the number of times I had to educate Fidelity CSRs about investment products available on their platform and the services they offered; while in the prior 10 yrs, I had consistently received outstanding service. Now, I hardly transact at Fidelity just to avoid having to deal with their CSR. I just leave most of my cash allocation at Fidelity. I expected Fidelity to assign less trained (and sometimes unprofessional?) reps to smaller accounts before elevating them to their highest level accounts but it is possible Fidelity lost too many employees at every level. l shall let other devoted customers train Fidelity CSRs before I check back with Fidelity.