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 @ibartman: That's the ticket, very much like the defunct Lipper tool, plus you can do etf's alongside traditional mf's. Good sleuthing. Gracias.
Reply to @prinx: Thanks, prinx, but no, the Lipper tool was essentially a more interactive version of the Smartmoney tool that ibartman mentioned above. It's a graphic, rather than a set of tables, using coordinates on x-y axes to depict risk-adjust…
Reply to @ibartman: That's a great one, which I use frequently to get a first snapshot of a fund I'm not familiar with.
Another plot tool I used to use a lot was a Lipper "interactive" tool using the same coordinate system as the one on Smartmoney…
Dtrainer, that was not the case at all. I tried a wide variety of funds, and their ratings were just as I stated in the previous post. Sorry, if you don't have a more plausible explanation, I don't care to spend any more time on the site, or have a …
I visited New Constructs today to check it out, and entered a couple of dozen tickers in the free analysis screen. All U.S. large and mid-caps were rated 3 stars, and all small caps were rated 2 stars. (There were no ratings for any of the foreign f…
Arnott: "In Pimco All Asset and All Asset All Authority, we invest in stocks [in the U.S. and other developed markets] purely as a tactical asset. We don't view it as a core vehicle."
I'm not sure I've seen him express this so clearly before.
Goo…
As far as the subject of off-topic posts goes, I recall that Roy spent a lot of time policing the board because things got kind of wild and woolly on occasion, and there would be a flurry of argument once in a while over what was on-topic and what w…
Haven't followed Icmax since Eric C. left, or the other two funds on your list, but Artsx is kind of interesting - after a total manager shakeout in '09, a good team came in (largely as I understand it) from Artisan's pretty successful Mid Cap team.…
Sold a short term (2 month) position in VGT, Vanguard's tech ETF, and a longer term position in a clone of VEXAX (small-mid index) in the 401k. Also reduced muni exposure a bit and added to PTTRX (Pimco Total Return: the fund, not the ETF).
Also ad…
Reply to @tgeno: In the last 'graph of my post, I meant the currency denomination of the bonds the fund holds. The fund's actually only ~ 8% cash as I recall. Not looking again, from memory, I think the figures were ~ $15 mm total assets with $1-2 m…
Speaking of Mainx, the note David included that the E.R. has been reduced to 1.0% is good news.
The news, however, is expressed a little oddly on the Matthews site. The E.R.s are shown as 1% for institutional shares and still 1.40 % for investor s…
That's great, David. Your interview and Andrew's responses are much appreciated. I'm really interested to see what will be in the first published portfolio.
The investment web site reviews are a nice new feature, too.
Gracias - AJ
HILO is another EM dividend fund, screened for low volatility, which results in way over benchmark allocations to telecom and utilities.
These custom indexes the various ETFs use seem to result in concentrations of one sort or another, many of them…
GTAA is Faber's baby. Below is how he described it prior to launch, on his own web site. I owned it for a few months, and recall that the AdvisorShares site had more information on the actual strategy early on, but then that info was scrubbed a bit …
Norway has stayed out of the EU and the euro monetary zone; they don't have any particularly overwhelming attachment to Europe officialdom.
I recall that one of the reasons for keeping out of the EU was that they wanted to be able to have a nationa…
Reply to @Old_Joe: I've had a good laugh at that series of on-demand-truthiness Doones strips, but I've also been thinking it might not be a bad model for a real business, ya know? I mean, you can't rely on Fox to "cover" exactly what you need at th…
I've got a prominent place reserved for it on the watch list, but I generally don't buy any new fund until at least the first full report/commentary/portfolio holdings comes out.
Nearly all my EM stock exposure is with Matthews right now; I recentl…
At the IRS, there's a new form 8949, replacing the D-1 continuation sheet as the feed-in to the Schedule D. You have to file separate forms 8949 for covered and uncovered shares. So for some sales starting this year, the proceeds and cost basis will…
Reply to @David_Snowball: Thanks, David. Just to be clear, I doubt there's much to be learned from probing about his leaving Matthews; both parties are rightly being politely mum about details, as pretty much anybody would do in the same situation. …
As I understand it (from M* "Management" pages), Andrew F. was lead manager for just shy of two years at Macsx, after having been second in command to Paul Matthews for about four years. However, he was also lead manager at Mapix for more than four …
Hmm. So the etf at 0.55 will be a bit more expensive than PTTRX (the institutional shares held by many through Vanguard & other brokerages) at 0.46, and even a tiny bit more than the derivative-lite HABDX (0.53).
Didn't realize the no-derivati…
As of 12-30, mortgages are the top holding by market value, followed by Treasuries, U.S. corporates, ex-U.S. developed, emerging markets, and a much smaller muni stake.
The asset breakdown of all the Pimco funds is available every month at http:/…
Followup: The rep told me that no, First Trust doesn't aggregate net currency exposure as Aberdeen does with its own funds, and you can't really compute it from the holdings because of the various currency contracts in the portfolio.
So it's hard …
Reply to @Kenster1_GlobalValue:
Thanks; enjoyed the EM bulletin. I have a call in to First Trust asking if they keep a currency breakdown anywhere in their documents like Aberdeen's own CEFs do - I see the notation in the report but I'm too lazy to…
Reply to @Kenster1_GlobalValue: Ken, I've been watching FEO myself & am close to opening a small position.
A couple of questions: Do you have any concerns about the thin trading?
And have you found a breakdown of currency exposure? The only …
I use Vanguard Ltd Term Tax Exempt VMLTX now (which Bob mentions above) & have used the V. short bond index VBISX (a lot of Treasuries) and the short term investment grade fund VFSTX (mostly corporates) in the past.
There's no wall between Vanguard fund accounts and brokerage accounts. You can buy Vanguard MFs with the same MM fund you use as the holding tank for brokerage transactions - as long as the registration of the accounts is the same. Not being able to…
Well, while that's incredibly stupid of BNY Mellon, you CAN get around the crapola through an ACH setup between your bank account and the Matthews account, plus it's even easier to navigate than with an "OR" joint account minus the ACH. Doing busine…
Reply to @Investor: Hi Investor, my post wasn't about star ratings; as you say, there is no star rating on it. The point I was trying to make, maybe not that eloquently, is that they used their miscategorization of the fund (which is partly a produc…
I used to do Matthews in Mapix and Macsx at 1:1; now it's about 2:1, exactly for the reasons Investor cites.
I also added a tiny chaser of Maptx just for fun; as of December, it had the best 1-year Sharpe of the Matthews regional funds.
It'd be …
Per the category issue, M* has DBLTX/DLTNX as a regular ol' intermediate bond fund, which it decidedly isn't, but it doesn't fit in multi-sector bond either (because it sure isn't multi!). I guess they could call it high-yield, and it would be super…
Reply to @Anonymous: I totally agree with Jim about the value of JG's webcasts. They're done with slides accompanying his commentary, and many of the slides make for quick, easy to understand visuals on aspects of current economic happenings, his ou…
A quick comment on the "time in the market" meme: I can't recall the sources now, as this was in the financial news several years ago now, but there was a thorough debunking of the "x best days" argument, due to the fact that a large percentage of "…
Reply to @CathyG: I think that's a good list for statistics in your last paragraph, Cathy.
I like Google for 1-year statistics; haven't found those anywhere else. Haven't been to MaxFunds in a while; I'll have to go look at what's going on over th…
There are definitely times M* lags in reporting NAVs. I have a separate portfolio set up at Yahoo, and it frequently has closing NAVs before M* does. There are also occasional cases where the current NAV shows up on the M* quote page for the fund b…
JG does a risk-balancing act with DBLTX: he has GNMAs, which did fine during the meltdown, balanced against riskier private mortgages - very little in subprime, mostly Alt-A and prime, bought at bargain prices. The beaten-down private mortgages are …
