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great opportunities await in EM bonds & real secret to beating market return...lip
Thanks John for some good reading. The one on beating the market looked nice but than I read it and it is really about the hanky panky some use to make their returns look better than they really are. Is there no shame? So far it looks like Sketter and Catch got it right this year. Skeeter said sell in May and the market went down. Catch likes bonds and they are doing well.
Me? I goofed buying a gold fund in December. It weas doing so good back then. But now is down 19% (MIDSX). I must say Rono said to buy real gold and not this fund, but I did not listen. That will teach me LOL. My hubby does our serious investing or I would surely loose it all. Maybe I'll learn more if I read this board every day. It looks like EM are doing good. Wondering if should sell the gold and buy some of them?
PS Maybe more people should post their returns like Catch does. What do you think?
This isn't anything against the article above, but I lean towards David's discussion on EM bonds in this month's mutualfundobserver article. "By Morningstar’s estimate, of the 20 emerging-markets local-currency funds, 14 have been opened in the last year." I definitely don't think it will end badly, but I just continue to think that the time to be overweight EM bonds was a year or two ago. If you have no EM bonds, then they are a good thing to have for the long-term, and I would suggest dollar cost averaging, but I wouldn't go "all-in". Maybe I'm wrong, but I just continue to think that fixed income investing will become more difficult in the years ahead, and you will likely see fixed income funds try to give themselves a bit more flexibility - see the other post about the Loomis Sayles bond fund wanting to be able to possibly take on a certain % of equity exposure. Additionally, Pimco has a newer balanced EM fund, which owns EM stocks and fixed income ("Pimco EM Multi-Asset".)
Gold stocks have not performed well, despite the underlying doing well. There have been a number of reasons discussed for this, including everything from the availability of direct investments that people chose to do instead (gold ETFs) to hedge funds going long gold/short gold stocks to people just buying it instead because they don't want to pick a mining stock to bet on precious metals only to have the mine have technical/physical problems or have the mine go on strike, etc. It remains to be seen whether or not the stocks will catch up, but TGLDX is really the only gold stock fund I would recommend (I don't own it, but it does have excellent management and has displayed less volatility than other funds in the class - it is only down just under 8% this year. I would not recommend gold stock funds be a large part of a portfolio; I do like commodities a great deal, but I think one has to be diversified within the stocks and within the commodities themselves, because while the precious metals will likely do well, I think there's a lot of other opportunities, especially in the agricultural space.
I owned Sprott Resources, which is part gold (and part a bunch of other things), and that did well up until earlier this year. I sold most a month or two ago and didn't like how it was trading and sold the remainder a few days ago. It proceeded to drop another 10% or so since then for no visible reason - no news, and the underlying commodities have done fine.
I think it goes back to sort of what Rono said, and what Jim Rogers has said - that essentially if you can pick specific commodity stocks, terrific, but the pure play on commodities is commodities. The stocks - especially with the market moving more together now - just move too much with the broader market or move too much on their own.
I think Scott got a great point I am not a mrket timer I think your best defense may also be your best offense: a good diversed portoflio comprised of active and passive managements that include real estates, commodities, sp500, em ,etc. etc... you can never know which sector will do well today and which will do well tomorrow
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Me? I goofed buying a gold fund in December. It weas doing so good back then. But now is down 19% (MIDSX). I must say Rono said to buy real gold and not this fund, but I did not listen. That will teach me LOL. My hubby does our serious investing or I would surely loose it all. Maybe I'll learn more if I read this board every day. It looks like EM are doing good. Wondering if should sell the gold and buy some of them?
PS Maybe more people should post their returns like Catch does. What do you think?
Gold stocks have not performed well, despite the underlying doing well. There have been a number of reasons discussed for this, including everything from the availability of direct investments that people chose to do instead (gold ETFs) to hedge funds going long gold/short gold stocks to people just buying it instead because they don't want to pick a mining stock to bet on precious metals only to have the mine have technical/physical problems or have the mine go on strike, etc. It remains to be seen whether or not the stocks will catch up, but TGLDX is really the only gold stock fund I would recommend (I don't own it, but it does have excellent management and has displayed less volatility than other funds in the class - it is only down just under 8% this year. I would not recommend gold stock funds be a large part of a portfolio; I do like commodities a great deal, but I think one has to be diversified within the stocks and within the commodities themselves, because while the precious metals will likely do well, I think there's a lot of other opportunities, especially in the agricultural space.
I owned Sprott Resources, which is part gold (and part a bunch of other things), and that did well up until earlier this year. I sold most a month or two ago and didn't like how it was trading and sold the remainder a few days ago. It proceeded to drop another 10% or so since then for no visible reason - no news, and the underlying commodities have done fine.
I think it goes back to sort of what Rono said, and what Jim Rogers has said - that essentially if you can pick specific commodity stocks, terrific, but the pure play on commodities is commodities. The stocks - especially with the market moving more together now - just move too much with the broader market or move too much on their own.
There is an excellent interview at King World News with Jim Sinclair, who is the CEO of a mining company and talks about how mining companies could turn things around and an overview of the situation.
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/6/8_Jim_Sinclair.html
In terms of their being no shame, nope.
I am not a mrket timer
I think your best defense may also be your best offense: a good diversed portoflio comprised of active and passive managements that include real estates, commodities, sp500, em ,etc. etc...
you can never know which sector will do well today and which will do well tomorrow