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The performance relative to other similar funds is superior going back to 5 year returns. Personally, I would not buy this because of the very high front load. If you are comfortable with the front load or can buy this without the front load; this fund may be worth consideration for you, if this sector fills a space in your portfolio that you desire to have. As with any fund right now; one finds a very good opportunity to observe fund reactions to the current market turmoil.
E.R. at 1.5% and a 5.75% front load. If one has to pay the front load, well.....and the e.r. is very steep. Lastly, I will presume that returns that are posted for this fund are loaded adjusted. I can not confirm this data.
I don't invest in the fund but have a couple of thoughts. First, I believe the fund's N class shares, ETGLX, are available at Fidelity, Schwab and others with no load and a 1.5% ER. I didn't check that, but its what M* says on their page for the class N shares.
Second, the fund's website worried me at first because it sounds like a religious driven fund and I'm normally not a big fan of those types of themes but as I read further I think its influenced by a faith based approach but its not employed in such a restrictive way that it causes problems.
Finally, my mid-growth fund of choice is POAGX, which is closed now, but I generally compare anything else to it for perspective. The returns have been amazingly similar year after year, but Primecap's expense ratio is only 0.64% so before expenses Eventide has done great but their price takes all of the extra performance for themselves (I wonder how that fits in with the faith based approach?). When I read about their investment approach, although they use different words and themes, they seem to end up in much the same place. The one thing that disturbed me was that Eventide's bear market rank was 68 and we haven't experienced a really bad bear market during its life so I'd worry a little about what will happen if we do.
Looking at the expense ratios, returns and risk parameters (standard deviations/sharpe ratios/sortino ratios), I would rank the currently open HC funds in the following order: PRHSX, JAGLX and ETAGX. Of these funds, JAGLX has the highest foreign exposure (21%). We currently own a 10% position in PRHSX.
And I agree with LLJB regarding POAGX, which represents 10% of our portfolio. Although POAGX is closed to new investors, Primecap has two other attractive open funds, POGRX and POSKX.
The fund is one of many fund that address some investors' religious convictions, just as other funds (all part of the greater-SRI universe) target environment, women's issues, renewable energy, sustainable businesses, worker rights, weapons, tobacco, and other individually-held criteria for investing. We have created a matrix of about 150 SRI funds and grouped them according to their target investors and their screens. There a more and more investors who are interested in SRI (Socially Responsible Investing), but there are a lot of different kinds of SRI funds, and the screens used by even those in similar groups can be widely different. This could easily be another discussion topic by itself.
@BobC, have you found any general truths about SRI funds compared to non-SRI funds? I'm sure there are SRI funds that have done very very well, ETAGX is a good example. But have you found that they do better on average? I could imagine there's so much interest in SRI that those companies who cater to SRI investors do better, get more business, and the funds that invest in them do better as well. I could also imagine, and my uneducated point of view is, that wrapping your investments in any number of SR restrictions may make investing in the "best" opportunities not possible.
The managers of ETAGX is experienced in picking the biotech winners such as AGIO and MDVN this year, many of their health care holdings are in the biotech space, they know the space for sure, their resume is impressive too.
As a newer fund with relatively small assets under management, I'm not so concerned with the expense ratio at present. What I would look forward to is the expense ratio being dropped as assets under management accumulate. I have no problem with somebody being paid for the work they do.
Hadn't seen this (generally old) thread before. Some quick observations:
- There's a real Eventide healthcare fund: ETNHX (for scott, Kevin)
- M* posted returns ignore the load (though the star ratings use load-adjusted performance). For 2014, M* reports ETAGX returned 17.84%;; the semi-annual report says that for 2014 ETAGX returned 17.85% (rounding error?), and 11.05% after including the load.
- Regarding size/ER - There are 212 mid cap growth funds. ETAGX, with a size of $2.1B is larger than all but 39 of them. I don't expect a significant decrease in its ER.
There are 66 smaller MCG funds with A shares. Of these, 54 have lower ERs. There are 23 larger MCG funds with A shares. Of these, only 1 (KAUAX) costs more.
Comments
Personally, I would not buy this because of the very high front load. If you are comfortable with the front load or can buy this without the front load; this fund may be worth consideration for you, if this sector fills a space in your portfolio that you desire to have.
As with any fund right now; one finds a very good opportunity to observe fund reactions to the current market turmoil.
E.R. at 1.5% and a 5.75% front load. If one has to pay the front load, well.....and the e.r. is very steep.
Lastly, I will presume that returns that are posted for this fund are loaded adjusted. I can not confirm this data.
Composition
Second, the fund's website worried me at first because it sounds like a religious driven fund and I'm normally not a big fan of those types of themes but as I read further I think its influenced by a faith based approach but its not employed in such a restrictive way that it causes problems.
Finally, my mid-growth fund of choice is POAGX, which is closed now, but I generally compare anything else to it for perspective. The returns have been amazingly similar year after year, but Primecap's expense ratio is only 0.64% so before expenses Eventide has done great but their price takes all of the extra performance for themselves (I wonder how that fits in with the faith based approach?). When I read about their investment approach, although they use different words and themes, they seem to end up in much the same place. The one thing that disturbed me was that Eventide's bear market rank was 68 and we haven't experienced a really bad bear market during its life so I'd worry a little about what will happen if we do.
Looking at the expense ratios, returns and risk parameters (standard deviations/sharpe ratios/sortino ratios), I would rank the currently open HC funds in the following order: PRHSX, JAGLX and ETAGX. Of these funds, JAGLX has the highest foreign exposure (21%). We currently own a 10% position in PRHSX.
And I agree with LLJB regarding POAGX, which represents 10% of our portfolio. Although POAGX is closed to new investors, Primecap has two other attractive open funds, POGRX and POSKX.
Kevin
Jim
- There's a real Eventide healthcare fund: ETNHX (for scott, Kevin)
- M* posted returns ignore the load (though the star ratings use load-adjusted performance). For 2014, M* reports ETAGX returned 17.84%;; the semi-annual report says that for 2014 ETAGX returned 17.85% (rounding error?), and 11.05% after including the load.
- Regarding size/ER - There are 212 mid cap growth funds. ETAGX, with a size of $2.1B is larger than all but 39 of them. I don't expect a significant decrease in its ER.
There are 66 smaller MCG funds with A shares. Of these, 54 have lower ERs.
There are 23 larger MCG funds with A shares. Of these, only 1 (KAUAX) costs more.
Ahead of the class even with 15-20 % cash.Finally bought 18 months ago.$$$ cost averaging N/L in Schwab retirement actt.Ted,Scott,Kevin, others have extolled many health care investment options for a long time on this board and seem to remain bullish.
From http://eventidefunds.com/our-products/#!healthcare
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/syndication/holdings.aspx?cn=GLG117&symbol=ETNHX
Also own HHCAX for "finacial health" insurance.