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.
Reply to @Rbrt: Since Romick is always throwing around the term "fiat currency," I suppose this P.S. from Barry Ritholtz (in a post today about stocking up on necessities ahead of Sandy) is directed at him, among others:
"PS: All you fiat money fol…
Reply to @hank: Yay! Gordon Lightfoot makes it into MFO! (FWIW, Gord's looking a lot older these days than he does in the video. Our loss when he stops touring ....)
Reply to @catch22: I'm with Catch on this one. Down-town Josh Brown has the symptoms of the common disease these days of extrapolating from Treasuries to the entire bond market, which is much larger and more diverse than the equity universe. Risk-ba…
Reply to @Charles: I second the FMIJX idea, with the qualification that it may not be some people's idea of a core foreign fund ... the theme is solid companies with global operations bought at reasonable prices, including U.S. stocks, lots of Europ…
Reply to @Ted: The linked page shows only past distributions, not estimates for this year. I haven't seen a headline yet on the V. home page for distribution estimates for this year ... if anyone has, that'd be of interest here, for sure.
David, I think what that set of stats means is that cash is predicted to outperform a U.S. total bond market index, specifically. However, I doubt that any competent, active bond manager is going to keep the same bond profile in his/her fund as the …
As I understood the article, it's not MSCI changing anything, it's the makeup of the Vanguard funds that will change.
V. is shifting from the MSCI indexes, which classify S. Korea as emerging, to FTSE, which classifies it as developed, so the V. fu…
Saw this earlier and was about to post, but Ted beat me to it. One interesting thing in the article is the case of South Korea: changing from MSCI to FTSE international indexes makes a pretty substantial difference because South Korea is "emerging" …
I'll just register a vote for the conference call approach to digging into newer, interesting, and innovative funds-- that is, if it's worth David's time considering the number of participants. The board's had a number of mentions of funds like that…
Reply to @LarryH: If you want to break it up into components to figure your whole portfolio's asset allocation, I'd do it ~ like this (like you probably do with any other allocation fund in your portfolio):
Jot down the asset allocation for the pas…
Reply to @fundalarm: Straight from the horse's mouth, as they say:
http://www.allianzinvestors.com/Products/Pages/631.aspx?ShareClassCode=ARTIFICIAL
45.83% effective leverage, through reverse repurchase agreements ... isn't that the Pimco way, to …
Reply to @Accipiter: Imho, Accipiter, there are more variables, though, that you can't isolate with a simple poll like this to be able to draw conclusions on the order of what you've stated above.
One category that will really muddy the relationsh…
Reply to @Mona: Hi again Mona, DBLTX and TCW's TGLMX are all-but-entirely mortgage funds, and both do a AAA/junk barbell act to limit price fluctuation while providing pretty remarkable yield. I'd say you could safely and profitably trade in all you…
Reply to @Mona: Hi Mona, I own PIMIX too, but added to PDIIX to bump up $ in foreign bonds, which is more of a core strategy at PDIIX. Since I own both PIMIX and DBLTX, I've got plenty of mortgages ... plus Gross has jumped on the mortgage bandwagon…
The Dreifus funds are, I think, the only Royce funds I'd consider since they went over to the dark side. I had RSEMX on a watchlist for a while, but it hadn't then quite measured up, and still isn't measuring up, to other conservative, risk-controll…
Good idea for a thread, Scott.
I've just been rearranging a bit over the past month or so: reduced municipals, beefed up my stake in Gross's BOND and Pimco's multisector PDIIX, reallocated some EM from MACSX to SFGIX, and added some to MAINX and D…
I don't see all that much redundancy in the funds you own.
At first glance DBLTX-RNSIX looks like some redundancy, but really, not so much. The kinds of bonds in BERIX, you've got plenty of exposure to in the Pimco funds, when the Pimco gang sees …
Reply to @CathyG: Hi Cathy, Long term T's are the classic place to run during recessions because they have been, and for the most part still are, the place a whole lot of people want to be when stocks are being crushed, and they want to own safe ass…
Reply to @hank: Good data, Hank. Look at that PRHYX figure -- wasn't it about half that, maybe a year ago? That's rough recollection, could be off, but I used to watch it from time to time. No wonder they closed it.
Reply to @scott: Diversified bond funds, even a lot of just regular ol' intermediate core-ish bond funds, have a fair bit more on the menu than gov't & high-grade corps. One current example of a hot bond sector (in which many diversified and som…
Bee, if a fund like YACKX appeals, rather than an aggressive fund, there are a few funds that more or less fall in that category of pretty steady and risk-controlled, like BBTEX, PRBLX, VDIGX, FMIHX, & AMANX and AMAGX, and you could probably als…
Or you can buy it in an IRA. You can buy DBLTX (the cheaper I shares) in an IRA for $5k directly from DBL, and I assume the same minimum applies to at least some of the brokerages that handle it:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info…
I don't follow either of those funds, so won't offer an opinion on them directly, but I'd point out as possible alternatives the new breed of multi-asset, yield-oriented ETFs, of which I've picked IYLD for a moderately significant investment with a …
From the M* performance pages, it looks like it's done really well in risk-on times and hasn't fallen far behind when it's risk-off; it's only had one negative month out of 11, and that was only -0.25%:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/perf…
Reply to @MikeM: I wonder (?) if the timing was dictated at least partly by the contract with the umbrella group; i.e., was there a provision that said the fund would shift the capacity to non-institutional investors if the projected institutional A…
Reply to @Charles: Class act, amen. For anyone who's interested in the fund at all and hasn't caught the conference call of July 12, it's a great window into the fund and the strategy, and AF's approach: organized, succinct, thematic, straightforwar…
Good article. I was interested in the brief mention of Build America Mutual, which is a new organization that will insure munis. The National League of Cities has already endorsed it:
http://www.nlc.org/find-city-solutions/savings-and-solutions/bui…
