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When a QMNIX trade was rejected this morning, my broker told me that 66 AQR funds in different share classes are no longer available at Scottrade. An AQR representative stated that funds are hard closed to individual investors on all broker platforms and will be available for trading only through selected investment advisors at Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan and UBS.
I think that is a wise move since the leadership at AQR Funds is simply not supportive of individual investors. A shareholder unfriendly shop actually, and it should never have offered shares on retail market.
We applaud AQR's move and wish more funds would have the honesty to stop inflows before performance suffers. We are still purchasing QMNIX for clients at Schwab, but can no longer do so at Fidelity. I have heard that retail shareholder dollars were fickle at best, which would echo the herd instinct of the average investor (not MFO members, of course).
I just placed a small buy order for QMNNX into my existing position at Fidelity, and the order went through normally. There's also nothing on the QMNNX fund pages about a closure, nor is there anything on the AQR web site that I can find. Guess I'll see if the buy actually goes through tomorrow.
I googled several different combinations to try to find any word at all on the topic, and found nothing.
However, I did run across one interesting site, called glassdoor, where employees post reviews of corporations they work for. AQR has 43 reviews, and they're pretty interesting.
walthuc stated: "An AQR representative stated that funds are hard closed to individual investors on all broker platforms and will be available for trading only through selected investment advisors at Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan and UBS."
Comments
Couple weeks ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-01-14/inside-aqr-s-mutual-funds-success-story
However, I did run across one interesting site, called glassdoor, where employees post reviews of corporations they work for. AQR has 43 reviews, and they're pretty interesting.
Apparently one brokerage didn't get the message.