Any chance these funds will be profiled in the coming months? Maybe Sam Lee would have some insight to share on these.
I think PSLDX was referenced before on the boards, it's compelling just because of the amount of outperformance it's exhibited and seems to have a larger correlation to long duration bonds, hence the name of the fund. Could be somewhat of a diversifier for an all stock portfolio, but overall just too much total return not to be at least worth a look. The institutional shares minimum is waved a TD and Scottrade.
DSENX seems to be doing fine and is known on this board, but the performance and strategy have been impressive in the short term with the CAPE etn and the mutual fund a year later along with the Shiller's backtest (aren't the backtests always good though).
Comments
>>The PIMCO prospectus gives the min as $1M. Brokerages generally have some flexibility in setting their own minimums.
Correct. Never seen this degree of flexibility.
Listed but unavail (to my accounts anyway) at ML.
Exact tracking w DSENX with remarkable performance.
One of the weaker aspects of Merrill Edge is that if it offers a share class NTF, it usually doesn't make the cheaper institutional shares available (with TF).
An exception is MWTIX. That share class carries a min of $3M. It used to be available at many brokerages for a min of $50K. Not small, but potentially reachable for some investors, especially as it can serve as a core fund. Now, Merrill is the only place I've found that still has this "low" min.
I looked at PSLDX's fund page here: https://www.pimco.com/investments/mutual-funds/stocksplus-long-duration-fund/inst
An interesting point is that its "secondary benchmark" is the following: In other words, PSLDX return is basically S&P 500 + Long-term bonds. You can think of this as taking your investment amount, leveraging it 2x, and then putting half of it into an S&P 500 index and the other half into a long-term bond fund. The "3-month LIBOR" in the benchmark would represent the interest rate you pay for the leverage -- interest rates have been low so this cost is basically negligible.
If you scroll down to calendar year returns, what you see is that PSLDX's performance does track the secondary benchmark pretty closely every year, i.e. what you are getting is S&P 500 + long-term bond return. Presumably PIMCO can borrow money cheaper than you can -- otherwise you could achieve the same thing by taking out a second mortgage and putting it in Vanguard Long-Term Government Bond Index Fund.
Leverage is often considered very risky, but I suppose the idea is that stocks and long-term bonds should not both decline at the same time. That would be pretty disastrous.
I would like to read your clear words on DSENX.
Regarding Schwab - I tried a test trade for $100K and asked for the $76 transaction fee to be deducted from this. It wouldn't let the trade go through, because the net amount to invest didn't meet the $100K min. A test trade for $100K plus $76 transaction fee was allowed to go through. Well, except for the fact that Schwab recognized I didn't have that kind of cash in the account