Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Edmund's got a good point - BOND does look like a global fund these days. It looked much more like a conventional IT-TR bond fund when I owned it in 2012-13.
Cef's are complex and at times volatile investments that deserve a lot of study prior to diving in with more than a few test bucks (a tutorial, lots of reading at the M* CEF forum and the buy-sell thread under the M* Fidelity forum, etc.).
Just fo…
Crash, that's the first I've heard of PRSNX in a while ... owned it once, right out of its gate, when I had quite a bit of $ with Price. It was known as Strategic Income then; did they change the investment strategy, or just the name? Looks about mi…
I guess time will tell how AF's overweight to Latin America will work out, especially the ~ 2.5x weighting of Brazil. May have to wait a while for the upside.
Yes to junk munis, and junk mortgages have done pretty well too. And, for the last 3 months or so, so have less corporate-junky bond cef's and some of the US$-denominated EM debt universe.
Personally I am glad to be ... in ASHIX albiet it's has a bit of a rough past month.
Mona
Yep, I noticed that like several other high-yieldy funds, they bought into battered energy really early, from a couple of percent to 9% in one swell foop. Du…
Mona: "I am still trying to understand why all the ink on MFO on RSIVX and not a drop on ASHIX ...."
Hi Mona, the Allianz fund is mentioned in this thread, and a few others. Search on ASHDX to find them, as that seems to be the share class people h…
Is the MFO Premium membership really tax-deductible if we are getting something for it (access to search tools)? How does that work?
Good question. For donations to non-profits that publish a magazine, say, or put on charitable dinner events, you h…
Hi OJ, I owned it in an IRA for a year-plus, but sold it when I decided to dump all pure HY corp exposure a few months back. I do think it's about the best thing going in the asset class, though. Looks like it's still doing ok within the category.
…
The dedicated board seat is a worry to me. Directors named on that basis are prone to acting for the good of the outside interest they represent, and not necessarily for the good of the organization they're governing. My impression is that it's more…
Echos of Andrew Foster's outlook going back three years - and he's crushed the index with SFGIX. Still, even following the Foster/GaveKal formula, EMs haven't done much, in absolute terms.
Good piece, heezsafe. AD's analysis of what VRX may actually be worth if they transition it to a sustainable business in the usual pharma mode seems to makes sense, but I don't think the SEQUX boyz will like the bottom line.
I would like to see Gundlach start an unconstrained fund of his best ideas not exclusively tied to bonds ....
I've had that thought too, and every time I do, check out DMLIX (multi-asset growth, I think the closest thing to that approach in his fun…
+1 for Lipper categories, which are more "granular" (in the terminology du jour) than M*, e.g., the all-cap equity categories vs. the M* "what's the cap average" approach that lumps all-caps and mid-caps together.
JG talks about the difference between TOTL and DBLTX.
Good, clear interview. When TOTL first came out, JG said that it would be essentially the DBLFX universe of FI asset classes with the duration of DBLTX and the barbell approach that both oef's f…
I followed GOODX for a while after inception, but gave up. Looks like they had a decent 2012 and an okay 2013 and then fell off a cliff in '14 and '15, so now they come in at the bottom of the category.
If I recall correctly, the now-#1 holding, W…
Do Yahoo or Fidelity show total return for mutual funds? I know only Morningstar, that provides such data.
Yes, like Ted linked above, but not several funds on a single page like you can set up with M* Portfolio Mgr. I still keep watchlists at M* f…
+1 for Yahoo.
Only place I know that's faster is Fidelity. If you have holdings at Fido, you can add non-Fido holdings to a watchlist, which is accessible directly from your portfolio page. That setup is consistently a bit faster to update than Ya…
Sequoia's status on Morningstar seems to have gone from "Under Review" back to "Gold" now. Maybe their review consisted of reading this thread?
The revised analyst report says the board resignations that M* said triggered the review of the fund wer…
The M* analyst rating page says the main reason for the fund's being "under review" is the resignation of the two independent board members, and secondarily, the stake in Valeant, which "illustrates the fund's heightened risk levels."
Aside: isn't …
Hi Bee, the chart pages for PDI and other cef's show both nav and price (but for TR on each, you have to go to the Performance page). As far as I've been able to tell, it's just when you start from an oef page and add a cef that you get TR on nav fo…
I've found I have to be careful using M* charts with regard to cef's. When you bring up a chart on an oef (e.g., PIMIX in Bee's post above) and then add a cef to compare, the chart shows total return for the cef on nav, not on price. The 'Performanc…
Speaking of RiverNorth, it boggles the imagination that RNSIX could be so mediocre YTD, at slightly less than 1% total return -- when many FI cef's are up 4-5% or more, and (representing the Gundlach sleeves) DBLTX and DBSCX are up 3.1% and 3.7% res…
Thought it must have been something like that, Hank. Yep, it's pretty much a short duration high yield fund, and junk has been out of favor (putting it at a disadvantage to its M* peers in MS*), but even so, Riverpark hasn't kept up with its real pe…
Hi Hank, I don't know what M* page you were copying from as far as the RSIVX credit quality breakdown goes, but here are the figures from the page that's on the site now, with data as of 9/30.
In round #s, all of the A categories (AAA-AA-A) = 3%,…
What are your thoughts though on QMNIX which has delivered an 18% return over the past year? Can that really be market neutral?
If you're curious, wxman, look at the prospectus and the quarterly fact sheets for both funds to see what they're doin…
Anyone use preferreds? They seem to be less volatile than REITs.
Yes, I'm new to preferreds, but owned PPSAX (lw at Fido) in 2014-early 2015 and now have a stake in a preferred cef. Good income, not all that volatile, but all the preferred funds I'v…
Hmmmmm. Higher yield has made less money in PREMX vs. DLENX. Curious.
Yeah, more capital loss in PREMX. That's what those risk ratings reflect.
I've owned both at different times, don't have either now; only EM bonds now are in the etf PCY, but tha…
Crash, the 5y figures I see on M* for annualized total return are 4.16% for DBLEX and 3.42% for PREMX, which makes some difference (top 7% vs. top 24%, five stars vs. four stars), and DBLEX is "low" on the risk rating vs. "average" for PREMX.
Padi…
M* stewardship grades supposedly take manager ownership of fund shares into account. From their (PDF) explanation of stewardship grades:
"Manager Ownership of Fund Shares
Fund managers who invest in the funds they run demonstrate conviction in the…
Yep, should be a requirement with a revision to list the revisions in plain and concise language at the outset, like our health insurance booklet does each year.
ECRI is a good, thorough source on econ cycles. Their indicators have been trending down for a while now.
ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan will on Bloomberg TV/Radio tomorrow (Monday) morning. He does great interviews.
Edmond: "... junk has a general seasonal tendency to do well from early Oct through December." " The seasonals tend to pivot rather sharply in junk -- wait too long and you've missed the move."
True dat. With the spread having widened so far and s…
Five grafs below the first reference to PRHYX, the article says "The T. Rowe fund is closed to new investors ...." A bit of a lag with that info ...
The HY spread is still widening, and it's been much wider in the past; however, neither seems to co…
Just another viewpoint: anyone who owns a substantial slug in their older global funds may not particularly need to chase the micro fund - GPROX has 30% in micros and GPGOX has 25%.
It's not just the 100y bonds; Pimco has quite a bit of P'bras of various issues across the board in their credit FI funds and cef's. And they've also got Gazprom almost everywhere you look ... just don't get it.
